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WHICH WAY? 



A STUDY OF 
UNIVERSALISTS 

AND 

UNIVERSALISM 



BY 

LEWIS B. FISHER 

RYDER UNIVERSALIST HOUSE 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 



universalist publishing house 
Boston and Chicago 






COPYRIGHT, 1921 
UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 



OCT r ?A 



§>C!.AS27368 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Preface 4 

Introduction by Hon. R. S. Galer, Presi- 
dent of the Universalist General Con- 
vention 5 

I. Which Way? 9 

II. Universalist Creeds 15 

III. Some Pioneers of The Way 22 

IV. John Murray and Thomas Potter 29 

V. Hosea Ballou 36 

VI. A Bit of New England Church History. . 48 

VII. The Andover Creed and Calvinism in 1806 58 

VIII. Walter Balfour 66 

IX. Hell 78 

X. Damnation 89 

XI. Endless Torment 96 

XII. The End of the World 103 

XIII. The Second Coming of Jesus 113 

XIV. The Way of the Ages 123 



PREFACE 

We are often asked for a brief, plain statement 
of what Universalists have believed in days past and 
of what they are believing now, in this new age, 
with its new Bible, its new science, its new psychol- 
ogy, sociology, economics and theology. 

I know of no such statement that can be given 
to these inquirers. This book is an effort to make 
such a statement. It is not written mainly for Uni- 
versalist preachers, nor for our well-trained laity, 
although it is hoped that it may not prove useless 
for such. 

It is written chiefly for those who do not know 
much about Universalists but who have a desire to 
know, and who are willing to give a little time to the 
study of the subject. 

For the general history of the denomination the 
best books to read are the two large volumes by Rev. 
Richard Eddy, D. D., entitled "Universalism in 
America." Smaller books are Fisher's "Brief His- 
tory of Universalism" and the later book by Rev. 
John Coleman Adams, D. D., "Universalism and the 
Universalist Church." This last-named little book 
has an excellent Universalist Bibliography. 

All these, and other books or periodicals on the 
subject, can always be obtained from the Universal- 
ist Publishing House, 176 Newbury St., Boston, or 
from the Universalist Western Headquarters at 
6010 Dorchester Ave., Chicago. 



INTRODUCTION 



Some people who profess to believe that 
theology is out of date may refuse to read 
this book. It is fairly certain, however, that 
if they will read the first two chapters they 
will read all of them. For this is a book 
which takes the facts and arguments of the- 
ology and makes them breathe and live. 
No arid discussion of obsolete theories, but 
a vivid, moving story, is contained in these 
pages — a modern miracle, if you please. 

The author has not made the mistake, too 
common in our days, of asserting that beliefs 
do not matter ; that theology is out of date ; 
that there are only superficial differences 
between the Churches. In its underlying 
philosophy Universalism is farther from 
Luther than Luther was from Leo the Tenth. *\ 
The author knows that beliefs move the 
world, and that without them but little 
progress would be made. It is also evident 
that he appraises historic origins at their 
true value. Just as you cannot understand 



INTRODUCTION 

the climate of to-day without studying the 
storm-swept seas of paleozoic ages, or the 
religion of ancient Israel without some 
knowledge of Babylonian and Canaanitish 
origins, so you cannot rightly interpret the 
religious movements of to-day without know- 
ing the story of their underlying causes. 
Thoughts have their roots deep in the past, 
and the study of to-day inevitably leads to 
the study of all the yesterdays. 

It is not only historical but constructive 
criticism that we find. There is no love for 
mere attack, but a profound anxiety for the 
truth. The author proves his thesis out of 
the living and growing science of philology. 
The Bible receives a modern interpretation 
which squares it with the language of to-day 
and the facts of experience, and rescues it 
from the absurdities of literal translation 
and traditional theology. I know of no book 
that traverses this ground so briefly yet so 
thoroughly, or in so delightful a manner. 
Dr. Fisher has placed the entire Universal- 
ist Church under obligation for this timely 
and valuable study. 

There is yet another admirable feature 
to which I must call attention. There is no 
attempt to shift the burden of personal re- 



INTRODUCTION 

sponsibility to an indefinite social entity, 
which has become the fashion in some quar- 
and spiritual rather than economic forces 
will solve all problems. The book is lumi- 
ters. Sin and salvation are both personal, 
nous with these truths, without which there 
would be but little excuse for the Christian 
Church. 

History, philology, theology, unite to 
make this a delightful and valuable addition 
to Universalist literature. 

Roger Sherman Galer. 



I. WHICH WAY? 

Universalists are often asked to tell 
where they stand. The only true answer to 
give to this question is that we do not stand 
at all, we move. Or we are asked to state 
our position. Again we can only answer that 
we are not staying to defend any position, we 
are on the march. No Protestant Church 
to-day can tell where it stands or what posi- 
tion it defends. 

We are not stationary nor are we defend- 
ing any final position. The Church of Rome 
is the only Church that stands to-day and 
defends an unchanging position. Even this 
old and conservative body now and then 
shows signs of growing pains, but it counts 
these as dangerous symptoms to be sharply 
suppressed. Most people, being conserva- 
tive, or under the same law of inertia that 
prevails in matter, are therefore attracted 
to the old Mother Church, and this fact gives 
to her great numerical strength and enables 
her to present an imposing front. 

But no Protestant Church to-day is as 
sure about finalities as is the Catholic 
Church, and for this reason Protestants 
suffer in numbers and in solidarity. 

We do not stand still, nor do we defend 



WHICH WAY 

any immovable positions, theologically speak- 
ing, and we are therefore harder to count 
or to form into imposing bodies. We grow 
and we march, as all living things forever 
must do. The main questions with Univer- 
salists are not where we stand but which 
way we are moving, not what positions we 
defend but which way we are marching. 
Our main interest is to perceive what is true 
progress, and to keep our movements in line 
with that, and not to allow ourselves to move 
round and round in circles simply, like 
Fabre's insects, or like a squirrel in its cage. 
Of course we can always say that we stand 
for God and man, for Jesus Christ and the 
Holy Spirit, for the Bible and the immortal 
soul, for redemption from sin, and for a 
human race that, in some day yet to be, shall 
learn to move on in harmony with God. But 
all these words and phrases take on new 
meanings, and therefore need new defini- 
tion, in each succeeding age. Nothing is 
clearer than the fact that the old definitions 
do not meet the needs of the new day, or that 
the old theologies do not function for the 
new occasions. Our worn phrases are always 
losing their old meanings, and must forever 
be finding new meanings in the light of new 
experiences. 



10 



WHICH WAY 

All good men and women to-day want a 
gospel that functions for the individual and 
for society, but the gospel that functioned 
for these yesterday fails to-day, and the 
gospel for to-day will have to meet 
the enlarging knowledge and experience of 
to-morrow. 

What may probably be more disturbing 
to minds that tend to inertia, which are 
dreading changes, and stoutly demanding 
final and authoritative statements and defini- 
tions, is that they will never get what they 
want in this or in any other possible world. 
What such people think they want is not 
what they truly need. No human word ever 
has reached or ever will reach finality of 
meaning. Each living age always has defined 
religion in the light of its own experiences, 
and all ages to come will do the same. 

Our attempt here then is to show which 
way Universalists are moving, rather than 
where they stand or what positions they 
occupy. If the inquirer is impatient with 
this indefiniteness and demands at once 
some final and fixed statements of unchang- 
ing and absolute authority, I confess that I 
do not know how to satisfy him. 

There was a time when he might have 
been referred to the graveyard, but with the 



11 



WHICH WAY 

latest discoveries about matter he is denied 
even that refuge to-day. That the body 
returns to dust we may perhaps still confi- 
dently affirm, but what dust is no mortal 
man to-day knows. It is certainly not the 
dead thing that the Bible writer thought it 
was when he wrote. To-day the Ethics of 
the Dust are far more wonderful than even 
John Ruskin saw, and the wonders of mat- 
ter fill the soul with awe. The Rock of Ages 
is no longer a fixture on which selfish souls 
may lazily slumber, but has, paradoxically 
enough, somehow got transformed into a 
brave craft out on the high seas of life and 
love and thought. 

This situation is very wholesome, but it 
is certainly trying for an indolent spirit 
that is attempting to be a Protestant, and 
especially is it trying for Protestant preach- 
ers and teachers. 

Professor Coe, of Union Theological 
Seminary, sums the situation as follows : 

"Every intelligent Catholic has definite and cor- 
rect ideas as to what his priest stands for, and of 
the meaning of membership in the Catholic Church. 
This gives the advantage of a unified and deter- 
mined front, indeed, but the ulterior problem here 
concerns the ends prescribed by the hierarchy to 
the faithful. To save one's own soul by obeying an 
autocratic spiritual authority, and to contribute to 
the final and complete triumph of this autocracy, — 



12 



WHICH WAY 

this conception of spiritual life, duty and destiny 
makes the problem of the priest too simple. He 
can fulfill his essential functions by performing 
certain prescribed operations in his strictly official 
capacity, and teaching certain doctrines and duties 
already strictly formulated. The problem of the 
Protestant minister goes many fathoms deeper than 
this." 

Yet Professor Coe, in a feverishness not 
common in a teacher so thoughtful, talked 
about the breakdown of the Protestant min- 
istry, precisely because that ministry, work- 
ing on its problems so truly called "many 
fathoms deeper," has not produced the same 
results that the priest produces. 

The thoughtful, earnest Protestant 
preacher or teacher, trying to lead his people 
along the Way, never has produced and 
never will and never should produce the 
material results that the priest produces by 
massing men in fixed and final positions 
where they stay to be counted. 

Universalists do not regret these facts 
about life, light, truth, growth or change. 
We glory in these moving, living visions and 
gladly pay the price for following them. We 
are afraid of nothing except finalities. What 
we greatly desire is ever more abundant life, 
and what we most fear is that our search for 
this life may dwindle into feverish and ill- 



13 



WHICH WAY 

advised motions. Which way? is the only 
big and vital question, for a living, growing 
spirit, in this living universe, filled with the 
Living God. The only stand we take is that 
we refusetostandatall,andtheonly position 
we defend is that no position is final. 



14 



2. UNIVERSALIST CREEDS 

Universalists, like all Protestants, have 
always been timid about their own princi- 
ples. We, with all Protestants, have affirmed 
the liberty of each soul to think for itself, 
itself to judge what is truth, to follow its 
"inner light/' accountable to no human 
authority, but to God only. 

But no sooner do we affirm this principle, 
than we become afraid of our own decision, 
and begin to try to make human statements 
that have absolute authority. We love lib- 
erty, and at the same time harbor suspicion 
that nobody can be safely trusted with it. 
Therefore, having thrown off the authority 
of popes, our fathers looked with fear on 
the throne thus vacated, and tried to put 
the Bible in the empty chair. 

But the evident truth is that God has 
never provided a pope nor a book that is 
final, absolute authority over the spirit of 
man. 

These authorities failing us, we have 
tried to formulate creeds on which we could 
make a final stand. In 1790 a company of 
Universalists spent fourteen days together 
in Philadelphia trying to write a creed and 
make a plan of church organization, strong 



15 



WHICH WAY 

enough to make them one body, and yet elas- 
tic enough not to deprive one of them of the 
right to think and do according to his own 
inner light. They worked long and diligently 
at this difficult task, and gave us our first 
creed of five articles. In 1803, thirteen years 
later, our fathers, and presumably our 
mothers, although their presence is not em- 
phasized in the records, met at Winchester, 
N. H., and reduced the Philadelphia creed, 
which they preferred to call a profession of 
faith, to three articles, as follows : 

Article 1. 

We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and 
New Testaments contain a revelation of the char- 
acter of God, and of the duty, interest and final 
destination of mankind. 

Article 2. 
We believe that there is one God, whose nature is 
love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one 
Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore the 
whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness. 

Article 3. 
We believe that holiness and true happiness are 
inseparably connected, and that believers ought to 
be careful to maintain order and practice good 
works, for these things are good and profitable un- 
to men. 

We make no apologies for this creed. Con- 
sidering its date, we are very proud of it, 
and confidently affirm that no Church of that 



16 



UNIVERSALIS? CREEDS 

time can show a creed as true. Thousands of 
Universalists can and do often repeat this 
Winchester Profession of Faith. 

The makers of this creed, however, had 
no idea that it was a final or inerrant utter- 
ance, no word or syllable of which could ever 
be changed without disrupting the universe. 

They had all had some bitter experiences 
with the creeds of their time, and were not 
over sure of the possibility nor of the desira- 
bility of such human attempts to make final 
expressions of the inexpressible. They, 
therefore, there and then voted to attach to 
the profession a saving clause. 

"Yet while we, as an Association, adopt a gen- 
eral profession of belief, we leave it to the several 
churches and societies ... to continue, or to 
adopt within themselves, such more particular ar- 
ticles of faith as may appear to them best under 
their particular circumstances, provided they do not 
disagree with our General Profession. And while we 
consider that every church possesses within itself 
all the powers of self government, we earnestly 
and affectionately recommend to every church and 
society, to exercise the spirit of Christian meekness 
and charity toward those who have different modes 
of faith or practice, that where the brethren can- 
not see alike, they may agree to differ, and let 
every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. ,, 

As the years passed, later Universalists, in 
their great and commendable desire for a 
more compact and efficient working Church, 



17 



WHICH WAY 

sometimes forgot the saving clause, and 
stressed the very words of the creed as the 
one absolute condition of fellowship for all. 

It thus came to pass that for more than 
half a century the Winchester Profession 
was almost as much a red flag of controversy 
and challenge among us as it ever was a 
symbol of authority. Rev. I. M. Atwood, 
D. D., the wise and beloved president of our 
Canton Theological School for more than 
twenty years, used to say that he himself 
could say the Winchester creed without doing 
violence to his intelligence, but when some 
of the brethren began to insist that to change 
a word of the old creed was almost equiva- 
lent to the sin against the Holy Ghost, he 
thought some changes would better be made 
in behalf of the life and liberty of the 
Church. 

In 1899, Universalists reached a truce of 
fatigue rather than the victory of any par- 
ticular faction, if there were factions, and 
agreed to adopt as our symbol what we have 
since called our "Five Principles." These 
are: 

The Universal Fatherhood of God. 

The Spiritual authority and leadership of His Son, 
Jesus Christ. 

The trustworthiness of the Bible as containing 
a revelation from God. 



IS 



UNIVERSALIST CREEDS 

The certainty of just retribution for sin. 
The final harmony of all souls with God. 

To these Five Principles we followed our 
fathers by adding the following "saving 
clause:" 

"The Winchester Profession of Faith" is com- 
mended as containing these principles, but neither 
this nor any other form of words is required as a 
condition of fellowship, provided always that the 
principles above stated be professed." 

The arrangement seems to have solved the 
creed problem of the Universalist Church. 
Since its adoption we have gained steadily 
in unity of spirit and of action. 

It is true that every preacher and parish 
may use any form of statement of belief that 
they see fit. Everybody insists, however, 
whatever creed he adopts, that "the princi- 
ples above stated" are always central in it. 
While these varied versions often display a 
certain mental agility, and some imagination 
may often be needed to find in them our 
"Principles," the matter has never yet been 
brought into any ecclesiastical court among 
us, and there is no disposition anywhere to 
resort to such measures of repression or lim- 
itation. We have been kept busy in some 
quarters explaining that by the spiritual 
authority of Jesus we never mean the same 
as intellectual or political or ecclesiastical 



19 



WHICH WAY 

authority, but the greater authority the 
Master expressed when he said "I am the 
Way." 

We also insist that by final harmony of 
all souls we never mean what a wise and 
much loved teacher, Prof. George B. Foster, 
once described as "a theory that makes this 
a world of joyless work, and that a world of 
workless joy." Our final harmony is found 
in walking forever in the Way, and not in 
arriving at some fixed estate. 

The words "universal salvation" might 
express our thought if only salvation could 
forever cease to mean getting into a final 
good place and keeping out of a final bad 
place, and take on its true meaning of 
spiritual health and sanity, and glad, free 
walking in the Way. 

Universalists, somehow, always mean, 
whatever form of words they use, that every 
soul must learn better and better forever to 
live and work with its "Senior Partner," 
God, and that no soul can be permanently 
left out of this partnership, without hope- 
lessly bankrupting the firm. Rev. Charles 
Alden says that the true firm name is "God 
and Sons," and that all the trouble arises 
because so many members of the firm are 
silent partners and not active. 



20 



UNIVERSALIST CREEDS 

So the creed makers among the Univer- 
salists have never supposed that they were 
speaking last words, but have simply been 
trying to turn searchlights ahead on the 
Way. 

Rev. Frederic W. Perkins, D. D., speaks 
for all of us when he says : 

"Any man who appreciates and claims his herit- 
age as a Christian freeman uses a creed as a cry 
to rally believers, rather than to expel heretics. 
That is a vital distinction. Is the Church a citadel 
of faith to be defended, or an army of the faithful 
to be led? In the latter case the creed is not a 
pass-word but a battle hymn, and its power and 
value are not in the words of the song so much as 
in the uniting spirit that it sings. We waste our 
time trying to erect creedal barriers against our 
foes. They are not likely to importune us to enter. 
Rather must we send our cry to the hearts of our 
friends, wherever they may be, inside our Church 
or without, confident that any Christian of the free 
mind and loving spirit can understand a fellow 
freeman when he speaks." 



21 



3. SOME PIONEERS OF THE WAY 

Universalists are those who hold the faith 
that, under the universal fatherhood of God, 
sometime all human souls will learn to walk 
upward and onward together in the Way. 
The Way is not safety first, but always 
service first. 

The names and addresses of the pioneers 
in this faith we do not know, and in this 
world will not know. Some day we may find 
them out. Surely those of this Way have 
been greater benefactors of mankind than 
those have been who could see only endless 
division and hopeless discords in this race 
to which we all belong. 

We do not know who it was that first 
perceived that all the members of a tribe or 
a clan were blood brothers and sisters, who 
should behave toward each other accord- 
ingly. Who later enlarged this idea to make 
it include all the tribes in a given territory 
as having common interests that could be 
best conserved by federation, we do not 
know. We do not know who first dreamed 
of a brotherhood of states or of a league of 
all nations. As a fact even up to our own 
time all this has been hardly more than a 
dream of the few. 



22 



SOME PIONEERS QF THE WAY 

The great masses of mankind have be- 
lieved in angry, jealous gods, dividing their 
friends from their enemies in endless separa- 
tion, and have tried to act like the gods they 
worshipped. 

Politicians and profiteers and militarists 
have so far generally had their wicked way, 
and blocked all these aspirations toward a 
united human race under the true and Living 
God. 

Only a few have seen thatthe dream of a 
human race walking together in the Way 
can never come true by the strong killing the 
less strong, or by the rich robbing the poor, 
or by ecclesiastics threatening fires of end- 
less vengeance. Belief in a God who is not 
Himself of this wicked way is the first need 
in inducing men to leave such ways. The 
way of the wicked shall perish. Help hasten 
the day. 

Zoroaster, the Prophet of Persia, saw 
the race of man engaged in an age-long bat- 
tle between the good and the evil. The in- 
visible spirits of light or of darkness fought 
with man on one side or the other in this 
warfare from which there is no discharge. 
The result was to be a final and complete 
victory of the forces of light. The scholars 
are not agreed as to whether Zoroaster 
thought that the wicked ones would be de- 

23 



WHICH WAY 

stroyed entirely, or finally be cleansed from 
their wickedness by the purifying fires 
through which all must pass. Thoughtful 
men, however, always know that to annihi- 
late a wicked soul, in the effort to cure it, is 
not a victory of the good at all, but the com- 
pletest possible victory of evil. 

Professor James once used a phrase 
about pouring out the baby with the bath 
that is an apt description of that theology 
that holds to the annihilation ot wicked souls. 
To kill the sinful soul in the effort to cure 
it, is never a successful spiritual operation, 
any more than the surgeon counts his work 
successful when the patient dies under his 
knife. 

Dr. George A. Gordon rightly declared 
that if God succeeds Universalism must be 
the result, and Universalists do not count the 
destruction of souls, nor their endless tor- 
ment, nor the passive permitting of them to 
destroy either themselves or the moral uni- 
verse, as consistent with faith in a God that 
succeeds. 

Universalists have a fondness for Zoro- 
aster, even if there is some question as to 
exactly what he meant by a victory of the 
good. Modern men cannot go with him in 
his dualism, nor in his visions of angels and 



24 



SOME PIONEERS OF THE WAY 

demons, although his personifications of the 
invisible forces of the universe appeal always 
to the poetic sense. 

If the traditions are correct as to the 
date of the death of Zoroaster it is not impos- 
sible that he was living in 586 B. c. when 
Nebuchadnezzar carried Judah captive into 
Babylonian exile. Fifty years later it was 
Cyrus the Persian, the Zoroastrian, who, 
becoming master of Babylon, aided the Jews 
to go back to Palestine and rebuild their city 
and their temple. It is interesting to reflect 
on the influence the contact of two religions 
here had on our religion to-day. In the Book 
of Isaiah the reader comes face to face with 
a great prophet of the Jews who declares 
that Jehovah girded Cyrus, and called him 
by his name, although Cyrus had not known 
Jehovah. This spectacle of Jehovah actually 
using a man of another race and another 
religion to accomplish his purposes greatly 
enlarged the mind of the Jew. He began to 
see the universals. He began to perceive 
that the Eternal doeth His will in the armies 
of heaven and among the inhabitants of the 
earth, until at last to Him every knee shall 
bow and every tongue confess His name. 
The Prophet caught the idea that his people 
were not to be the military tyrants of the 



25 



WHICH WAY 

world, crushing all their enemies under iron 
heels. But rather Judah was to be "The Suf- 
fering Servant," who should not fail nor be 
discouraged until he should have set justice 
in the earth. Let Jews and Christians alike 
remember this, for, before Jesus came, 
thought never reached nobler vision. Not 
many in Israel, however, could long sustain 
themselves at such spiritual heights. 

The Hebrew saw his people in cruel and 
insulting captivity among the nations. Not 
yet could they love and forgive their enemies. 
Rather they began to expect a Messiah, a 
soldier like David, who should come with 
vengeance in his hand, destroying all their 
enemies and making the Jew the supreme 
military nation on earth. This sort of Jew- 
ish Messianic expectation had grown very 
strong by the time Jesus came, and his early 
disciples, being Jews, were full of the belief 
in a Messiah of military prowess destroying 
their haughty foes with the sword. 

This crude, revengeful Messianism 
largely shaped the reports of Jesus' life and 
teachings, although it is all as far from the 
real Jesus as East from West. 

Few modern men and women have yet 
risen to such a sentiment as this that Dr. 
Kohler taught his students : 



26 



SOME PIONEERS QF THE WAY 

"Our modern conceptions of time or of space 
admit neither a space nor a world period for the 
reward and punishment of souls, nor any intoler- 
able conception of eternal joy without useful action, 
and eternal agony without any moral purpose. 
Modern man knows that he bears heaven and hell 
within his own bosom." 

Zoroaster then, and the great Prophet of 
Isaiah, are pioneers of the Way. The teach- 
ings of Jesus and of the makers of our New 
Testament will be spoken of in coming 
chapters. 

We barely notice here the names of a 
few pioneers of the Way among the teachers 
of the Christian Church during the early 
centuries. 

Hosea Ballou 2nd (1) and Edward 
Beecher (2) and Rev. J. W. Hanson (3) 
have made clear all the facts w r e know about 
the Universalism of the teachers of those 
times. 

Beecher maintained that of the six theo- 
logical schools of the early Church, four 
taught universal restoration, one taught an- 
nihilation and one only taught endless 
torment. 

Beecher and Hanson are both confident 



(1) Ancient History of Universalism. 

(2) The Doctrine of Scriptural Retribution. 

(3) Universalism in the First Five Hundred Years 
of the Christian Church. 



27 



WHICH WAY 

that real Universalism was never condemned 
by any General Council nor endless punish- 
ment ever taught by any ecumenical creed. 
In a local council at Constantinople in 544 
A. D. Origen's doctrine was for the first 
time officially condemned and anathematized. 

Dr. Hanson shows, however, that what 
was really condemned was "The fabulous 
pre-existence of souls and the monstrous 
restitution that follows from it." Whatever 
may have been intended, it is certain that 
there is no condemnation of real Universal- 
ism in those words, but only of a certain 
method of reaching Universalist conclu- 
sions, for which no one to-day would contend 
for a moment. 

In the books referred to, and in many 
others, any reader can find full accounts of 
Clement and Origen and the Gregories and 
Theodore and other teachers who believed 
and taught that Jesus was stronger than 
Satan, good stronger than evil, love more 
enduring than hate, and that at last God 
shall be all in all. 

These teachers differed as to the proofs 
of this conclusion, but they were one in the 
conviction that such a conclusion must some- 
how be reached or the universe sink into 
darkness and chaos. 



4. JOHN MURRAY AND THOMAS 
POTTER 

From the fifth century of our era to the 
eighteenth, Universalists are not conspicu- 
ous. For a long time the "dark ages" was 
the term applied to the earlier of these cen- 
turies. To-day the preferred name is the 
Middle Ages. 

We know to-day that God does not leave 
Himself entirely without witness in any age, 
and that no age, therefore, is entirely dark. 
Surely centuries that gave us Dante and Ber- 
nard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi and 
some of the abler schoolmen, and men of 
these types, should not be thought of as 
entirely dark. In the main, however, always 
gladly noting the exceptions, the earlier of 
these ages were times of ignorance and 
superstition. 

To a frightful extent, in those ages, re- 
ligion, so called, was a belief in demons 
thronging the earth and the air, an angry 
God up in the sky in a fixed spot called 
heaven, and a Christ chafing with passion to 
get hold of his enemies and get even with 
them. 

One view of Christ was that which the 
Jewish Messianism had fastened on the 



29 



WHICH WAY 

Christian Church. Jesus is in the sky only 
temporarily. He is very soon to come in the 
clouds, with trumpets and fire and all his 
angels, to set up a judgment seat, and re- 
ward his friends and get even with his 
enemies. 

As the year one thousand approached, 
the words of Peter that with God a day was 
as a thousand years and a thousand years as 
one day, were in many minds, and a vague 
terror was aroused in countless souls that the 
Day of the Lord was at hand. The orthodox 
view, since Augustine, however, had curi- 
ously modified this New Testament view. 
Jesus is not to come to earth again, he has 
gone into the sky to stay. As men die they 
are to go up into the sky at once, or, some 
said, they are to lie in their graves until all 
are dead, and all rise together into the sky, 
and there is a judgment throne up there 
which tries them all and sends them to 
heaven or hell. There is nothing like this 
in the New Testament. That almost in- 
variably teaches that Jesus is coming back to 
earth very soon, in that generation, that he 
is to come down miraculously out of the sky, 
his angels with him, and set up judgment 
on earth, at once. 

The current exhortation was never 



30 



JOHN MURRAY AND THOMAS POTTER 

"Prepare to die," but always, "Watch for 
his coming." 

These two views, the one that Jesus is to 
come here to earth in material physical form 
to judge all men, and the other view, that 
men are to die and go up into the sky to be 
judged, are both in the world still, side T)y 
side, and it is high time that both of them 
were dismissed forever. Neither view is a 
correct guide to the Way. 

In America Universalists date a revival 
of their ideas from the coming of John Mur- 
ray (1) . Murray was born in Alton, England, 
in 1741 and came to this country in Septem- 
ber, 1770, a young man under thirty. His 
landing at a place called Good Luck in what 
vas then the wilderness of New Jersey, and 
his strange meeting with Thomas Potter, 
maketheidylofthe Universalist Church (2). 

Potter had built a church at Good Luck, 
and, while any passing preacher was always 
welcomed to it, yet none of them preached 
to suit Potter, and he was steadfastly await- 
ing a preacher whom the Lord would surely 
send, who would preach the real everlasting 
Gospel. When Murray arrived. Potter un- 
hesitatingly greeted him as the preacher he 



(1) Life of Rev. John Murray. 

(2) John Murray's Landfall, by Nehemiah Dodge. 



31 



WHICH WAY 

had long expected. From this beginning 
John Murray went on his preaching itinerary 
all over America as then it was. He finally 
settled at Gloucester, Mass., where he mar- 
ried Judith Sargent, the daughter of one of 
the leading colonial families. The Sargent- 
Murray House still stands, and, owing largely 
to the efforts of Rev. Levi M. Powers, D. D., 
it has been restored to its original appear- 
ance and is a striking and beautiful example 
of a fine colonial dwelling much appreciated 
in the city where it stands. Murray later 
moved to Boston, where he died in 1815. 

In 1870 Universalists gathered in large 
numbers at Gloucester for the celebration of 
the hundredth anniversary of the landing of 
Murray in America. 

In 1920 they met again in the same spot, 
for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
of the same event (1). 

John Murray had been converted from 
Calvinism to Universalism by a London 
preacher named James Relly. The Rellyan 
theology was simply Calvinism made Uni- 
versal. That is, only the elect are saved, 
but everybody is elect. Or, put in 
another way, Christ had redeemed all men 
by his death on the cross, so all men are 

(1) From Good Luck to Gloucester, by F. A. Bisbee. 



32 



JOHN MURRAY AND THOMAS POTTER 

saved. No mortal man can do a thing toward 
deserving or earning any salvation whatever. 
All men are saved only by the grace of God, 
His undeserved and unearned love to man. 
This grace is made effective by the blood of 
Jesus shed upon the cross. In some way that 
blood paid the price or the penalty of all 
human sin, so all are redeemed. 

Elhanan Winchester was a noted con- 
temporary Universalist preacher, and the 
two men often met and were friends, and yet 
friends with something between them. Win- 
chester believed that sinners had to pass 
through punishment, in some cases eons of 
it, to cleanse them from sin. Murray re- 
garded this theology with open contempt as 
salvation by punishment, whereas, as he saw 
it, salvation was by grace, the free gift of 
God to all. 

Relly had written a book called "Kelly's 
Union," which Murray always put second 
only to the Bible. This book taught the mys- 
tic union of all souls with Adam, in which all 
fell with him, and the even deeper union 
with Christ by which all are saved in him. 

Murray's theology is no more artificial 
and out of date than is all the theology of his 
day. It is always to be estimated in the light 
of the age in which Murray lived. It was 



33 



WHICH WAY 

simply the Orthodoxy of his day extended to 
include all souls. 

"Calvinism Improved" is the correct de- 
scription of Murray's theology, and this is 
the title given it by Rev. Joseph Huntington, 
D. D., who was the learned pastor of the 
Congregational church at Coventry, Conn., 
from 1763 to his death in 1794. Dr. Hun- 
tington gave the above title to a very vigor- 
ous defence of Universalism which he 
wrote, which doctrine he ardently believed, 
although he doubted the wisdom of saying 
much about it. Rev. Charles Chauncey, D. 
D., pastor of the First Congregational 
Church of Boston from 1727 until his death, 
was the author of a book entitled "The Sal- 
vation of All Men," in which he too made 
Calvinistic theology save all mankind, by 
making all mankind the elect for whom 
Christ died. 

Thus all the Universalists of America 
were in the beginning entirely orthodox, 
drawing from Calvinistic premises Univer- 
salist conclusions. 

Mr. Murray was often asked, "If all are 
saved, why preach?" A similar question 
might be put to any Calvinist, of course. If 
no "elect" can be lost, and no "non-elects" be 
saved, why preach? Murray was in the 



34 



JOHN MURRAY AND THOMAS POTTER 

habit of answering this question by saying 
that while all were redeemed not all were 
yet saved. 

To Murray redemption was something 
that was done for every member of the 
human race, by the blood of Jesus Christ 
shed on the cross. But salvation is for each 
individual to have a personal consciousness 
and experience of this redemption in his own 
soul. 

There is a great truth for all the ages in 
John Murray's idea of the reason why the 
world always needs preachers and teachers. 
All are redeemed, but only a few at any 
given time know it. Everybody in all the 
world needs to be told the fact, and taught 
to understand and grasp it. The love of God 
does always enfold all human souls whether 
they know it or not. The law of God always 
works in all human souls whether they know 
it or not. Salvation is to know these won- 
derful facts in personal experience and to 
respond to them in loving obedience. For 
this purpose the world will always need 
preachers and teachers. 

John Murray and Thomas Potter and 
Elhanan Winchester were men of the Way, 
and Universalists will always love to honor 
their memories. 



35 



V. HOSEA BALLOU 

Hosea Ballou was born in Richmond, 
N. H., in 1771, and died at his home in Bos- 
ton in 1852 (1). 

His father was a Calvinistic Baptist 
preacher who got such a living as he could 
by farming, and preached because he could 
not help it. His mother died in his infancy. 
The home, therefore, was that of the 
pioneers of that time and place, save that it 
sorely missed the much-needed mother. 
Ballou, like Abraham Lincoln, never went to 
school a year in his life, and for the same 
reason, namely, there were no opportunities 
within the reach of either of them. Com- 
pared with Jonathan Edwards of the gen- 
eration preceding, or with Channing and 
Emerson, his contemporaries, Ballou suffers 
as far as college education goes. From the 
viewpoint of mental industry and native 
ability to read and think, he stands the test 
of comparison much better. 

By some, however, Ballou has been dis- 
missed as an ignorant defender of an upstart 
and dangerous theology. Buckham, for in- 
stance, in his volume on "Progressive Reli- 

(1) Hosea Ballon, a Marvelous Life Story, Safford. 
Also Hosea Ballou and the Gospel Renaissance of the 19th 
Century, Adams. 



36 



HOSEA BALLOU 

gious Thought in America" has only this 
word for him: Extremists, like Hosea 
Ballou, aflame with zeal against the doc- 
trine of endless punishment. 

This estimate of Hosea Ballou puts the 
writer of it in the class with "Punch," who 
saw Abraham Lincoln only as the "Illinois 
Ape," or the "rail-splitter." 

One has long since apologized to the 
world for his mistaken estimate, the other 
will do so in due season. 

That in our day there is so little need for 
any one to be aflame with zeal against the 
doctrine of endless punishment is due to 
Hosea Ballou more than to any other man. 
This achievement will appear supremely 
great only to him who appreciates what a 
horror that doctrine was to all sensitive 
souls in Ballou's time. Channing, as a 
child, was perplexed and tortured that his 
father, after listening to a Hopkinsonian 
sermon of that day, could softly 
whistle to himself in careless strains 
as they were riding home. It seemed to the 
sensitive child as if his father should have 
shrieked with terror. 

Ballou did not move among the scholars 
any more than Lincoln did, but, like Lincoln, 
he knew and loved the common people, and 



37 



WHICH WAY 

struck off the shackles of terror and super- 
stition that enslaved them as no other man 
has ever done. He thought his way from 
the Calvinism unmitigated of his youth, into 
Universalism, with only the slightest assist- 
ance from any other Universalist. His one 
book was the Bible, and from that he formu- 
lated his theology with almost no other aid. 
Chadwick says that : 

"Ballou was not a learned, not an educated man, 
but that he knew his one book, the Bible, as well as 
any man could know it, who knew no other. He 
was a great preacher and a greater soul. It was 
not by exegesis but by humanity that he prevailed. 
He warmed the heart of the Eternal, as the Calvin- 
ists had made him, at his own loving breast. We 
cannot honor him too much. ,, 

At the age of twenty he began to preach, and 
after a few failures found himself, and there- 
after grew in power steadily until he became 
as famous as any preacher of that day. This 
fame was far from being uniformly friendly 
or complimentary, indeed in many quarters 
he was regarded as having horns and tail 
and cloven foot. People were so accustomed 
to their chains that they felt uneasy when 
they were removed, and thought their souls 
imperilled by one who offered them freedom. 
We are nowhere told that the people that 
Moses led out of slavery ever gave him a vote 



88 



HOSEA BALLOU 

of thanks, but rather that they often accused 
him of leading them into deadly peril. 

Ballou preached three times each Sunday 
to his own crowded church in Boston, and 
nearly every week day in some other place 
within his reach. His books and pamphlets 
and the paper he edited went everywhere. 
Everybody in New England knew of him, 
even if some, who never personally met him, 
insisted on calling him "Old Ballou." 
Usually they were more respectful after 
meeting and hearing him. 

In 1805 he wrote a book, which has 
passed through a score of editions, and which 
is still known and read among us, named 
"Ballou on the Atonement." This book, as 
edited by Dr. Adams, and with his introduc- 
tion, should be studied (1). 

It would be idle to claim that, in its lit- 
erary form; this little book is a Harvard 
Classic, but for those who are willing to be 
patient with its form and to look for its 
meanings it is one of the epoch-making books 
of the world. It is not unlikely that a 
thoughtful reader will find as much in this 
book that has stood the test of time as he 
would find in Edwards, or in the theology of 
Channing. 

(1) Ballou on the Atonement. John Coleman Adams. 
89 



WHICH WAY 

In "Ballou on the Atonement" appears 
for the first time Universalism that is differ- 
ent from "Calvinism Improved," and in it 
appears also all the substance of Channing's 
Unitarianism, fifteen years before Channing 
stated it. 

Probably Ballou did not sympathetically 
perceive all that the different ages had 
meant as they tried to express the various 
ideas of the atonement under the figures of 
sacrifice, ransom, injury to God's honor, the 
dignity of the infinite law against sin, or 
the sacredness of a debt. It seemed to him 
that all these theories of atonement were 
alike wrong, in that they all attempted to 
make Jesus on the Cross do something to 
change, or to appease, or to satisfy God. 

To Ballou it was incredible that God 
could be, or needed to be, changed. It was 
perfectly self-evident that man was the 
party that needed to be changed, and so Bai- 
lout thought reversed all the old theories of 
atonement, and made the Cross of Christ 
God's supreme attempt to change man. 
Ballou held to the sovereignty of God as 
stoutly as ever Calvin did, but it was the 
sovereignty of fatherhood and not of 
satanism. 

The sovereign purpose of God to recon- 



40 



HOSEA BALLOU 

cile the universe to Himself— note that the 
Scripture never says to reconcile Himself to 
the universe — by the way of the Cross of 
Christ, is a purpose that can never be per- 
manently defeated. 

Ballon came to believe that the Bible 
doctrine of sin and its sequencesrelatedonly 
to this present world and to flesh and blood. 
He saw clearly that punishment is natural 
consequence, and not an artificial, arbitrary, 
postponed penalty. To wait a long time, 
until a sinner dies, and then put him into a 
literal lake of fire, was a clumsy procedure 
which Ballou could not conceive of God as 
using. When a soul sinned, then and there, 
in the soul, began the natural, inevitable, 
immediate sequences of sin. That these dis- 
astrous sequences would continue as long as 
the soul sinned, Ballou never doubted, but 
he interpreted the Bible as teaching of sin 
and its sequences as they are in this world 
only. In evaluating Ballou's thought here it 
is only fair to remember the limits he set for 
himself. He never discussed the question of 
what reason, orinference, or philosophy may 
think about the future life. He confined 
himself entirely to the question, "What do 
the Scriptures teach ?" His answer to this 
question was that the Scriptures concern 



41 



WHICH WAY 

themselves only with sin and its consequences 
in this life, in this world. Modern Biblical 
scholarship is far more in accord with 
Ballou on this point than is commonly 
known. All agree that in the Old Testament, 
sin and its sequences are dealt with as of 
this life and this world only. 

As for the New Testament, the key to it 
is that the age before the Messiahisthenand 
there ending, that the new age has then and 
there arrived. That generation, some stand- 
ing there, were to see the Son of Man come 
in his glory with all his Holy Angels. To 
apply these vivid texts to a life beyond the 
grave, when they so clearly refer to an old 
age then ending and a new age then begin- 
ning, was a strange blunder of which Ballou 
was never guilty. What human reason or 
philosophic speculation might guess about a 
future life, was a point Ballou did not dis- 
cuss. He was sure that the Bible concerned 
itself with this world, and this life. No Bible 
scholar to-day would contend, against Ballou, 
that the most solemn appeal of Amos to pre- 
pare to meet God referred to a life beyond 
the grave, or that the still more searching 
call of the New Testament, "Watch, for ye 
know not the day nor the hour when the 
Lord comes," refers to death or to some 



42 



HOSEA BALLOU 

remote future life. Ballou believed that the 
Bible supported Emerson, in the vigorous 
protest that he made, and that so many have 
made in our own time, against the hurtful 
notion that the sequences of sin could be 
postponed to some other world, or that the 
law against sin failed to function here and 
now. 

Ballou undoubtedly did attach an im- 
portant agency to death. It was like taking 
a soul out of a dark into a light place. It 
was a complete change of environ- 
ment. Not in itself did it ever save a soul, 
but it might make a soul see a great light, 
repent of sin, and so be saved by the Cross 
of Christ. This is not so different from the 
doctrine of the effect of environment which 
is accepted by all to-day. 

If Ballou underrated the power of a sin- 
ful will to resist God, that error is not so 
disastrous as the opposite notion that a 
wicked human will can permanently wreck 
God and His moral universe. 

Somehow modern men must bring Ed- 
wards on the Will and Ballou on the Atone- 
ment and Tousey (1) together. 

The only view of the atonement that will 
function in our age is the view suggested by 

(1) The Problem of Human Destiny as conditioned 
by Free Will. Tousey and Abbott debate. 

43 



WHICH WAY 

the mind of every true penologist, that every 
prison, or every institution that deals with 
sin and sinners, must be, not a place of aim- 
less torment, nor of wicked vengeance, but 
a moral hospital for the study of souls, and 
the cure of soul diseases. It will not make 
light of the disease, but neither will it make 
light of the love and power of God, and the 
consecrated, scientific, trained men and 
women that work with God for the cure of 
souls. The Cross of Christ is the world's 
visible symbol of the Eternal, bending to our 
human needs. The soul that knew no sin, 
dying there for us who do sin, the good 
dying for the bad, the wise dying for the 
unwise — this is the Way of the Cross. 

This is the Atonement that God made, 
that Christ makes, that every good man and 
woman must make. 

So a critical, thoughtful reader of the 
Bible will have an increasing respect for 
Ballou's contention that the Scriptures 
relate to the life that now is, and to the 
setting up of Christ's spiritual kingdom in 
this present world. Those who insist on re- 
ferring texts about sin and punishment to 
death and to the future, and on reading into 
them detailed descriptions of another world, 
are infinitely farther from the truth to-day 
than Ballou was in his day. 

44 



HOSEA BALLOU 

The Orthodox world, however, believed 
then, and perhaps suspects even now, that 
Ballou's Universalism made light of sin. It 
has seemed to many that he made the love 
of God a sort of mere "good-naturedness 
with sin," and surely it is never that. It is 
good that men protest against that, but it is 
unjust to suppose that Ballou ever taught 
it. The only sign that Channing ever made 
that he knew that he had in Boston a fellow 
pastor named Ballou was a contemptuous 
charge that he flung out that somebody, he 
did not say who, but somebody, taught "that 
death changed and purified the mind." 
Ballou indignantly denied that any intelli- 
gent Universalist ever taught that. 

Channing did not know either that he 
had a neighbor named Garrison. It is said 
that he met Garrison once and shook hands 
with him, but did not know whom he was 
greeting. He had no more sympathy with 
or understanding of the hard-hitting, sturdy- 
fighting editor of "The Liberator" than he 
had with Ballou. 

He utterly failed to appreciate the 
change that Ballou made over the Murray 
theology, and the battle for liberal Christian 
thinking Ballou was waging. Channing did 
not like fighters ; they were too rude for his 



45 



WHICH WAY 

cultured tastes, but yet it must be confessed 
that when driven to it Channing was a noble 
warrior later. 

Universalists have sometimes ventured 
to compare with Lincoln's Gettysburg ad- 
dress the words with which Ballou closed 
his book on the Atonement. 

They are far better words for mankind 
to believe and practice than are the words 
of Edwards in his sermon on "Sinners in the 
Hands of an Angry God." Here are 
Ballou's words: 

"The fulness of times will come, and the times 
of the restitution of all things will be accomplished. 
Then shall truth be victorious and all error flee to 
eternal light. Then shall universal songs of honor 
be sung to the praise of him who liveth forever and 
ever. All death, sorrow and crying shall be done 
away, pains and disorders shall be no more felt, 
temptations no more trouble the lovers of God, nor 
sin poison the human heart. 

"The blessed hand of the once Crucified shall wipe 
tears from off all faces. transporting thought. 
Then shall the blessed Saviour see of the travail of 
his soul and be satisfied. 

"Then shall the great object of the Saviour's mis- 
sion be accomplished. Then shall the question be 
asked, '0 death, where is thy sting?' But death 
shall not be to give the answer. And '0 grave 



46 



HOSEA BALLOU 

where is thy victory?' But the boaster shall be 
silent. The Son shall deliver up the Kingdom to 
the Father, the eternal radiance shall smile, and 
God shall be all in all." 



47 



VI. A BIT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCH 

HISTORY 

The way we are moving can always be 
illuminated by a study of the way along 
which theology has moved in the past. In 
the year 1636, which was only sixteen years 
after the Pilgrims landed, and the time that 
the Puritan exodus to America was getting 
under way, the General Court of the colonies 
founded a college. Two years later John 
Harvard gave to it his library of three hun- 
dred volumes, and one-half of his estate, 
so the college took his name. 

There may be some things that our Puri- 
tan ancestors did that we are willing to 
forget, but that they, out of their poverty, 
founded this great university is imperish- 
able glory. 

Until the beginning of the nineteenth 
century Harvard College was fully in line 
with the prevailing theology. While this 
theology was Calvinistic, it was yet not 
all of one type, but fell into several divisions, 
in which our fathers were deeply interested, 
but which are mostly forgotten by us. The 
main group was made up of those who called 
themselves the "Old Lights," or the "Old 
Sides." These stood proudly and unmoved 
on Calvinism straight. There is a story 
somewhere that one of them once rebuked 



48 



A BIT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCH HISTORY 

an ardent youth who advocated foreign mis- 
sions, with the sharp words, "Sit down, 
young man; if God has elected any heathen 
to be saved, He will save them without any 
of your help." 

They presented theology in very cold and 
formal ways, in long intellectual sermons. 
They constantly bewailed the indifference to 
religion among the people, and the dreadful 
worldliness they saw around them, but there 
was no effort to overcome this by any emo- 
tional revival methods. Formal religious 
education, by logical, thoughtful sermons 
and lectures, was the way to which the dig- 
nified churches of America clung, as they 
had learned in the Church of England. 

In 1734 Jonathan Edwards began to 
preach his awful sermons, of which the one 
entitled "Sinners in the hands of an Angry 
God" has come to be the best known. He 
was followed by such men as Gilbert Ten- 
nent, and others, and the result was the 
most remarkable wave of spectacular emo- 
tionalism that America had seen, known as 
"The Great Awakening." Those who advo- 
cated this method of revivalism were known 
as the "New Lights," or the "New Sides." 
These two groups were not always nice in 
the language they flung at each other. 



49 



WHICH WAY 

Whitefield, in these years, came from 
England to America seven times. No more 
wonderful religious orator has lived than was 
Whitefield. He could speak outdoors to 
twenty thousand people, so that the farthest 
man could hear every word. When we are 
forced to sit before a preacher who does not 
know how to project his voice over even the 
three front rows of seats, we pray for a 
return of Whitefield. At the fairs, no show- 
man could compete with him, and the crowds 
deserted the "movies," or whatever then 
corresponded to them, and flocked to the 
preacher. The formal dignified churches of 
America, as of England, doubted the useful- 
ness of Whitefield's methods, and often told 
him so in language that could not be misun- 
derstood, while he in turn told the "Old 
School" that they were "Dumb dogs, half 
devils and half beasts, unconverted, spir- 
itually blind, and leading their people to 
hell." 

Such were the fine spiritual amenities of 
our ancestors. 

Besides this division into old and new 
lights, there was another theological group- 
ing that has a certain interest to us, as 
history. 

Edwards, followed by a group of preach- 



60 



A BIT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCH HISTORY 

ers, one of whom was Hopkins, of Newport, 
where Channing grew up, stressed the in- 
finite majesty and sovereignty of God. He 
had nothing whatever to do, to all eternity, 
but to contemplate His own glory. Man 
had no moral power or will whatever. Man 
was to think only of the glory of God. For 
this glory, Hopkins taught, man should be 
willing and glad to be endlessly damned. 
Man was an insect, the glory of God was 
all. This fine disinterestedness was known 
as Hopkinsonianism, and a Calvinist of the 
Old School had no dealings with a Hopkin- 
sonian. 

All these groups, however, were in entire 
agreement as to the literal, endless hell of 
material fire, into which the non-elect went 
at death, and an angry God nursing His ma- 
jestic glory in the sky. 

The Great Awakening was followed by a 
reaction that left the American churches at 
their lowest ebb, from about 1750 to 1800. 
This reaction was in part the natural conse- 
quence of a period of such intense emotion- 
alism, and was also partly due to the in- 
tense absorption of the minds of Americans 
in wars and politics. 

The Indian wars, and the Revolution, 
and the struggle to form our new govern- 
ment and constitution, absorbed the minds 

51 



WHICH WAY 

of men, and religion and churches suffered. 
It was during this period of the low ebb of 
religion, that John Murray did much of his 
work. 

He was one of Washington's chaplains, 
and did much to aid the people, in the awful 
disorder and chaos that always have followed 
and always will follow war, as long as 
human beings insist on such insanity. 

In one way Murray was the means of 
shaping New England theology curiously. 
Murray always taught that Christ died on 
the Cross, not only for the elect, but for all. 
All are elect. Now Jonathan Edwards the 
younger adopted this same view. How, then, 
could he escape being a Universalist? 
Edwards and his school escaped the Univer- 
salist conclusion, from their premise that 
Christ died for all, by going back to an idea 
of the atonement invented by Grotius. 

That idea is known as the governmental 
theory of the atonement. It is based on the 
majesty and glory of God's law. That law 
must be upheld, whatever happens. Christ 
did not die for individual men — me or you — 
but Christ died to uphold the dignity of 
God's law against sin. That law being vin- 
dicated, God could do as He pleased about 
forgiving individual sinners. 



52 



A BIT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCH HISTORY 

Walker thinks that, even if this was the 
theory of the atonement that filled New 
England, it was about the worst possible 
theory, since every devout Christian feels 
that Christ died for "me." So thought 
Hosea Ballou in 1805. Universalists, even at 
that early date, had madethemselves enough 
known to make it logically necessary to adopt 
either their views or else this governmental 
theory of the atonement. 

During all these years of mechanical and 
artificial theology, in which the emphasis 
seems to have been on exalting God and 
doing nothing for man, there were many 
Universalists and Unitarians, and other 
liberals. 

Wearied with the clash of theologies, for 
some time the feeling was against attempt- 
ing any new liberal organizations. The idea 
was for liberals to stay in the established 
churches, to avoid all doctrinal controver- 
sies, to quietly preach religion that all could 
unite on, and make no new sects. This was 
the temper of Channing, and of many others. 
It was the feeling of Mayhew, Chauncey, 
Huntingdon, and Briant, all of whom were 
Universalists. George de Benneville, a child 
of the French refugees in America, landed 
in Philadelphia the year John Murray was 
born, and preached Universalism in that 

53 



WHICH WAY 

vicinity all his remaining life, but made no 
movement toward a separate sect. It does 
not appear that Murray at first thought of a 
separate church. Adams Streeter and Caleb 
Rich — the latter being the ancestor of John 
Dewey of modern fame — preaching in 1775, 
appear never to have heard of Murray at 
that time, and to have made no plans for a 
new denomination. Whether for good or for 
evil we may not be sure, but this irenic 
temper was not long continued. One reason 
for new sects was that until 1834, in Massa- 
chusetts, the Congregational Church was the 
established order, and all who did not belong 
to another church had to support that one. 
The matter of taxation, therefore, made for 
formation of new sects. 

But the taxing was not the main reason 
for this. Calvinism was aggressive and per- 
sistent, and liberals were forced to separate 
or be suffocated. 

The Universalists, many years before any 
formal Unitarian organization in America, 
met in 1790 in Philadelphia, and in 1803 in 
Winchester, N. H., and adopted a creed and 
planned a separate denomination. 

Hosea Ballou published, in 1805, his book 
on the Atonement, which was hardly of a 
compromising temper. 



54 



A BIT OP NEW ENGLAND CHURCH HISTORY 

But the event which shook New England 
was the appointment of Henry Ware, the 
Unitarian, to a professorship in Harvard 
College, which meant that the controlling 
body of that ancient seat of learning had 
become Unitarian in 1805. The storm clouds 
began to gather, but it was about 1815 before 
the tempest broke. 

It was 1815 when Belsham in England 
wrote a life of Lindsey, in which book he 
included a chapter on American Unitarian- 
ism. Jeremiah Evarts, a staunch Calvinist, 
published this chapter, with a long preface 
of his own, and circulated it all over New 
England. 

Evarts said that this chapter convicted 
the Unitarians of New England of dishon- 
esty in covertly teaching or hypocritically 
concealing their opinions, and he stoutly de- 
manded that all Unitarians be denied the 
Christian name, and excluded from all Chris- 
tian courtesy and fellowship. For ten years 
and more Hosea Ballou had been proclaiming 
all the Unitarian principles, but now Chan- 
ning and Harvard College Unitarians were 
forced either to keep silent under Evarts' 
pamphlet or else make a stand and be 
counted. 

So the Universalists first and then the 



55 



WHICH WAY 

Unitarians are in the field. Many ask to-day 
why these two liberal denominations are not 
one. The answer to this is not easy, as the 
smallest differences, even long after they are 
forgotten, often build the highest and stiff est 
fences between sects. Chadwick, the biogra- 
pher of Channing, gives this answer to the 
question why Universalists and Unitarians 
are not one denomination. He says : 

"The early Universalist societies were recruited 
more in Baptist and Methodist quarters than among 
the Congregationalists, and on more democratic 
social lines. The early Unitarians, as socially aris- 
tocratic, were naturally averse to a promiscuous 
salvation. Men might be born free and equal (the 
habitual misquotation), but that they died so was 
another matter not lightly to be maintained. " 

Perhaps it was too much to expect that 
the Harvard College scholar and the plain 
man from the New Hampshire hills should 
start arm in arm and walk side by side. It 
may be that their spiritual children can not 
even yet comfortably forget the old inherited 
divergence. 

It may be that a still more vital reason 
that helped to separation, in the formative 
years, was the fact that Channing and the 
majority of New England Unitarians were 
not yet Universalists. Belsham and some 
of the English Unitarians were frank believ- 



56 



A BIT OF NEW ENGLAND CHURCH HISTORY 

ers in final universal salvation, but it was a 
long time before Channing came to so large 
a place. 

These causes of separation are, however, 
merely historical. There can be no real 
reason why, at any time that it appears to 
best advance the Kingdom of Christ, thaf all 
Liberal Christian people, in all present ex- 
isting denominations, should not feel and 
practice the happiest Christian unity. 



57 



VII. THE ANDOVER CREED AND 
CALVINISM IN 1806 

The growing strength of the Universal- 
ists, and the absorption of Harvard College 
by the Unitarians, resulted, in 1806, in a 
strong Calvinistic movement to go up to 
Andover and build one institution that no 
Unitarian could ever steal and no Univer- 
salist corrupt. It might not be just easy 
to tell a Unitarian from a Universalist, but 
Calvinists swore that, if the English lan- 
guage could do it, they would draw up one 
creed that would forever define the differ- 
ence between both these pestiferous sects 
and Orthodoxy. To make this forever cer- 
tain, the Orthodoxy of New England drew up 
the once famous, now forgotten, Andover 
Creed. 

This Andover Creed can not be forgot- 
ten too much, nor buried any too deep, to 
satisfy Universalists. It has a certain in- 
terest, however, as a historical document, 
and since we are so far from it that it cannot 
possibly rouse any animosities in anybody, 
we dig it up and print it here. 

In its day it had a value. To produce it 
all the factions, the old lights and the new, 
the old sides and the new, strict Calvinists 



58 



THE ANDOVER CREED AND CALVINISM IN 1806 

and strict Hopkinsonians, all forgot their 
differences, to make a solid front against 
Unitarians and Universalists and all other 
dangerous heretics named in the document. 

As a statement of exact theology its 
value is less, because it is a compromise. 
The reader can skip it without any offence, 
but if he wants to know the "pit from which 
he was digged and the rock from which he 
was hewn," he would better take a half hour 
or so and read it. 

Here is the Andover Document: 

"Every Professor shall be an orthodox and con- 
sistent Calvinist, and after a careful examination 
by the visitors with reference to his religious prin- 
ciples, he shall, on the day of his inauguration, pub- 
licly make and subscribe a solemn declaration of his 
faith in Divine Revelation, and in the fundamental 
and distinguishing doctrines of the Gospel, as ex- 
pressed in the following Creed, which is supported 
by the infallible Revelation which God constantly 
makes of Himself in His works of creation, prov- 
idence and redemption, namely: 

"Creed of the Institution. 

"I believe that there is one and but one living 
and true God; that the word of God, contained in 
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is 
the only perfect rule of faith and practice; that 
agreeably to those Scriptures, God is a Spirit, in- 
finite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wis- 
dom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth; 
that in the Godhead are three persons, the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and that these three 
are one God, the same in substance, equal in power 



59 



WHICH . WAY 

and glory; that God created man after His own 
image in knowledge, righteousness and holiness; 
that the glory of God is man's chief end, and the 
enjoyment of God is supreme happiness; that this 
enjoyment is derived solely from conformity of 
heart to the moral character and will of God; that 
Adam, the federal head and representative of the 
human race, was placed in a state of probation, and 
that, in consequence of his disobedience, all his 
descendants were constituted sinners; that by 
nature every man is personally depraved, destitute 
of holiness, unlike and opposed to God, and that, 
previous to the renewing agency of the Divine 
Spirit, all his moral actions are adverse to the char- 
acter and glory of God; that being morally inca- 
pable of recovering the image of his Creator, which 
was lost in Adam, every man is justly exposed to 
eternal damnation, so that except a man be born 
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God; that God 
from His mere good pleasure, from all eternity, 
elected some to everlasting life, and that He en- 
tered into a covenant of Grace, to deliver them out 
of this state of sin and misery, by a Redeemer; that 
the only Redeemer of the elect is the Eternal Son 
of God, who for this purpose became man, and con- 
tinues to be God and man, in two distinct natures 
and one person forever; that Christ as our Redeem- 
er executes the office of a Prophet, Priest and King; 
that, agreeably to the covenant of Redemption, the 
Son of God, and He alone, by His suffering and 
death, has made atonement for the sins of all men; 
that repentance, faith and holiness are the personal 
requisites in the gospel scheme of salvation; that 
the righteousness of Christ is the only ground of 
a sinner's justification; that this righteousness is 
received through faith, and this faith is the gift 
of God, so that our salvation is wholly of Grace; 
that no means whatever can change the heart of a 
sinner and make it holy; that regeneration and sanc- 



60 



THE ANDOVER CREED AND CALVINISM IN 1806 

tification are effects of the creating and renewing 
agency of the Holy Spirit; and that supreme love to 
God constitutes the essential difference between 
saints and sinners; that by convincing us of our sin 
and misery, enlightening our minds, working faith 
in us, and renewing our wills, the Holy Spirit makes 
us partakers of the benefits of redemption ; and that 
the ordinary means by which these benefits are 
communicated to us are the word, sacrament and 
prayer, and that repentance unto life, faith to 
feed upon Christ, love to God and new obedience, 
are the appropriate qualifications for the Lord's sup- 
per, and that a Christian Church ought to admit no 
person to its holy communion before he exhibits 
creditable proof of his godly sincerity; that per- 
severance in holiness is the only method of making 
our calling and election sure; and that the final 
perseverance of the saints, though it is the effect 
of the especial operation of God on their hearts, 
necessarily implies their own watchful diligence; 
that they, who are effectually called, do in this life 
partake of justification, adoption and sanctification, 
and the several benefits which do either accompany 
or flow from them ; that the souls of believers are, 
at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do im- 
mediately pass into Glory; that their bodies, being 
still united to Christ, will at the resurrection be 
raised up to glory, and that the saints will be made 
perfectly blessed in the full enjoyment of God to 
all eternity; but that the wicked will awake to 
shame and everlasting contempt, and, with devils, 
will be plunged into the lake that burneth with fire 
and brimstone forever and ever. I, moreover, be- 
lieve that God, according to the council of His 
own will, and for His own glory, hath foreordained 
whatsoever comes to pass, and that all beings, ac- 
tions and events, both in the natural and the moral 
world, are under His providential direction; that 
God's decrees perfectly consist with human liberty, 



61 



WHICH WAY 

God's universal agency with the agency of man, 
and man's dependence with his accountability; that 
man has understanding and corporeal strength to 
do all that God requires of him, so that nothing but 
the sinner's aversion to holiness prevents his salva- 
tion; that it is the prerogative of God to bring good 
out of evil, and that He will cause the wrath and 
rage of wicked men and devils to praise Him, and 
that all the evil which has existed and which will 
ever exist in the moral system will eventually be 
made to promote a most important purpose under 
the wise and perfect administration of that Al- 
mighty Being, who will cause all things to work for 
His own glory and thus fulfill all His pleasure. 
And, furthermore, I do solemnly promise 
that I will open and explain the Scriptures 
to my pupils with integrity and faithfulness, that 
I will maintain and inculcate the Christian Faith, as 
expressed in the Creed, by me now repeated, to- 
gether with the other doctrines and duties of our 
holy religion, so far as may pertain to my office, 
according to the best light God shall give me, and in 
opposition not only to Atheists and Infidels, but to 
Jews, Papists, Mahometans, Arians, Socinians, Sa- 
bellians, Unitarians and Universalists, and to all 
heresies and errors, ancient or modern, which may 
be opposed to the Gospel of Christ, or hazardous to 
the souls of men; that by my instruction, council 
and example, I will endeavour to promote true piety 
and godliness; that I will consult the good of this 
Institution, and the peace of the Churches of our 
Lord Jesus Christ on all occasions, and that I will 
religiously conform to the Constitutions and Laws 
of this Seminary, and to the Statutes of this Foun- 
dation. 

"The preceding Creed and Declaration shall be 
repeated by every Professor on this Foundation at 
the expiration of every successive period of five 
years, and no man shall be continued a Professor 



62 



THE ANDOVER CREED AND CALVINISM IN 1806 

on said Foundation who shall not continue to ap- 
prove himself a man of sound and orthodox prin- 
ciples of divinity according to the aforesaid Creed." 

The wise and learned faculty of the An- 
dover Theological School, it may be said here, 
had no trouble with this creed. For three- 
quarters of a century they came forward 
every five years and took the required sol- 
emn pledge. 

In 1886 Prof. Egbert Coffin Smyth, pres- 
ident of Andover School, was tried and con- 
demned for heresy by the Board of Visitors 
of Andover. Professor Smyth appealed to 
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and in 
1891 that Court reversed the decision of the 
Board of Visitors, and declared their re- 
moval of Professor Smyth illegal and invalid. 

Professor Smyth declared that he ac- 
cepted the Seminary creed "in its historical 
sense." It was his opinion that "the Semi- 
nary Creed might be and should be adjusted 
to a larger knowledge and life than were 
open to the framers." 

With this opinion Universalists entirely 
agree, only they have a suspicion that it 
might be a lot easier to make a new creed 
than to adjust that old one to any God, or to 
any world, or to any man, that we know 
anything about. 



63 



WHICH WAY 

In addition to the Andover Creed we 
print, to close this dreary chapter, a state- 
ment of what Calvinism was in those early- 
years of the nineteenth century, as seen by 
that mild and scholarly gentleman, Dr. 
Channing. As Channing saw it: 

"Calvinism teaches that, in consequence of 
Adam's sin in eating the forbidden fruit, God brings 
into life all his posterity with a nature wholly cor- 
rupt, so that they are utterly indisposed, disabled, 
and made opposite to all that is spiritually good, 
and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continually. 

"It teaches that all mankind, having fallen in 
Adam, are under God's wrath and curse, and so 
made liable to all miseries in this life, to death 
itself, and to the pains of hell forever. It teaches 
that, from this ruined race, God out of His mere 
good pleasure, has elected a certain number to be 
saved by Christ, not induced to this choice by any 
foresight of their faith or good works, but wholly 
by His free grace and love, and that, having thus 
predestinated them to eternal life, He renews and 
sanctifies them by His almighty and special agency, 
and brings them into a state of grace, from which 
they cannot fall and perish. It teaches that the 
rest of mankind He is pleased to pass over, and to 
ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sins, 
to the honor of His justice and power. In other 
words, He leaves the rest to the corruption in which 
they were born, withholds the grace which is neces- 
sary to their recovery, and condemns them to most 
grievous in soul and body without intermission in 
hell fire forever." 

It was after the boy Channing went to 
church with his father and heard all this 



64 



THE ANDOVER CREED AND CALVINISM IN 1806 

"proved" that he was amazed and shocked, 
on the way home, to hear his father 
whistling a light tune. 

So out of all these troubled waters of 
New England theology emerged in 1790 the 
Universalist denomination, and thirty-five 
years later, in 1825, the American Unitarian 
Association. It was hard, and it is yet hard, 
for these liberal Christians to stand any- 
where and at the same time to take no final 
stand. We shall all learn in due season, how- 
ever, that true religion is the Way, and not 
a final stand, nor an immovable position. 



65 



VIII. WALTER BALFOUR 

The Andover creed and the statement of 
Calvinism are printed here in full, because 
they are the best official statements of the 
theology our Universalist fathers hadto face. 
The cultured gentlemen who framed these 
creeds were usually of the sort who would 
not needlessly set foot upon a worm, and yet 
who contemplated with a calmness undis- 
turbed, and even with positive satisfaction, 
the spectacle of a God crushing a universe 
under His heel, for the promotion of His 
own glory. That Hosea Ballou was an ex- 
tremist, aflame with zeal against these ideas, 
is to his eternal credit. These statements, 
drawn up by quiet scholars in the seclusion 
of their studies, apparently without taking 
account in the slightest degree of the real 
world, and the real human race, sound se- 
rene, and it is not easy for comfortable cul- 
ture to-day to realize the terrible intensity 
with which these ideas were held by the com- 
mon people, and are still so held in many 
sections of this world. Those creeds, when 
held as facts realized, made the universe a 
chamber of horrors, and a madhouse for 
countless sensitive people. 

These creeds are excellent illustrations 
of the futility of attempting to express 

66 



WALTER BALFOUR 

finalities in theology, and to fasten these 
finalities on generations yet unborn. They 
are amazing also in their attempt to formu- 
late the substance of the Christian religion 
without making the slightest reference to 
the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, 
or the law of love to God and to man, or the 
seeking of the Kingdom of God, all of which 
Jesus so expressly put first in His teaching. 
They have no perception of world-wide mis- 
sions, or of the passion for social justice 
which are the great keynotes of the Bible. 
They put everything of importance up in the 
sky, postponed until after death and judg- 
ment. Man is an insect contemplating the 
glory of God, if he does not entirely forget 
that in his sharp struggle for existence. 

The Andover creed, however, conceded 
one point of interest, namely, that God in- 
tended, by the whole scheme, to bring good 
out of evil. This indirectly happened in the 
one particular that it gave Walter Balfour 
to the Universalist Church. Walter Balfour 
has gone out of fashion among Universalists. 
It is doubtful whether his name or his books 
are mentioned any more in our pulpits or our 
seminaries. Yet this man once filled a very 
notable place in our ranks as we moved along 
our way. Dr. Emerson, who shared with Dr. 



67 



WHICH WAY 

Cantwell the honor of being our greatest 
editor in days past, in his biography of Eben- 
ezer Fisher, who was for twenty-one years 
the head of our oldest theological school, said 
that it was the study of Balfour's Inquiries 
that made Universalists of both him and 
Dr. Fisher. Practically all of our earlier 
teachers and preachers would have said the 
same thing. Dr. Emerson declared that it 
had always seemed to him that no candid 
person could read Balfour's books and ever 
again believe that the doctrine of endless hell 
torments is taught in the Bible. Balfour's 
books are all out of print long ago, but all 
the main points for which he contended are 
incorporated in the new Bible, by which we 
mean the American Standard version, or 
such less official versions as those of Moffatt 
or of Weymouth, who are recognized schol- 
ars in the Orthodox Church. 

Walter Balfour was born in Scotland 
about 1776, in the home of a weaver. Dur- 
ing his childhood he was carefully trained in 
all the doctrines of the Church of Scotland, 
and received deep and lasting religious im- 
pressions into his naturally reverent and de- 
vout soul. He was one of a dozen or so 
youngmen who organizedthemselvesto hold 
a weekly meeting together for prayer and 



68 



WALTER BALFOUR 

Bible study. A wealthy man in the town 
determined to devote a part of his money 
to educating for the ministry some of these 
young men. 

Balfour was one chosen for this purpose, 
and thus obtained an excellent theological 
education, especially in the Hebrew and 
Greek original Scriptures. 

He preached in Scotland for several 
years and then came to America, settling in 
Charlestown, Mass., which was his home 
until his death. He was happily married 
there, and several children were born into 
the home. 

He preached constantly in the Orthodox 
churches within his reach, and after a time 
gathered around him a congregation of his 
own, meeting regularly for worship in a 
hall. To add to his slender income as a 
preacher, he kept a small shop, although it 
seems as if he must have been a sort of Rob- 
ert Browning shopman whose soul was in 
biblical and theological matters far more 
than in his dry goods and groceries. 

So this quiet, obscure Scotch Calvinist 
preacher went on his humble way, never 
doubting in his mind that his Calvinism was 
God's complete and final word to mankind. 
He said later that he had met a few Univer- 



WHICH WAY 

salists, and argued with them, but always 
knew that he had the best of the argument. 
Now begins that great storm of controversy, 
between the Calvinism of New England on 
the one side and Universalists and Unitari- 
ans on the other. 

Channing, in 1819, preaches his famous 
Baltimore Sermon, and Moses Stuart, of 
Andover fame, begins some replies. 

Of course, the active mind of Walter 
Balfour was intensely interested in every 
word of this controversy, and not a doubt 
entered his mind but that liberalism would 
be entirely wiped out, when Stuart finished 
with Channing. A portion, perhaps the 
major portion, of the whole controversy, 
hinged on the doctrine of the Trinity, and of 
the deity of Jesus. Both of these doctrines 
Channing had emphatically denied, and he 
had affirmed that the Scriptures nowhere 
teach men to render spiritual worship to 
Jesus, as to God. 

Stuart, replying to this assertion of Chan- 
ning, quotes two passages of the New Testa- 
ment. The first passage is Philippians 2 :10 : 
"That in the name of Jesus, every knee 
should bow, of things in heaven and things 
on earth, and that every tongue should con- 
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of 



70 



WALTER BALFOUR 

God the Father." The second text is Reve- 
lation 5:13: "And every creature which is 
in heaven and on the earth, and under the 
earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that 
are in them, heard I saying blessing and 
honor and glory and power be unto him 
that sitteth upon the throne and unto the 
Lamb forever." 

Professor Stuart's comment on these 
texts was that "things in heaven, earth, and 
under the earth was a common periphrasis 
of the Hebrew and New Testament writers 
for the universe." He also said of these 
texts, "If this be not spiritual worship, and 
if Christ be not the object of it here, I am 
unable to produce a case where worship can 
be called spiritual and divine." Thus a re- 
markable result of the Calvinist-Liberal con- 
troversy of that day, that has always inter- 
ested Universalists, was that it caused a 
man who every five years all his working life 
cheerfully signed the Andover creed, to 
affirm that some day the universe — all ra- 
tional souls — should render spiritual and 
divine worship to Christ. 

In his zeal to answer Channing, and to 
defend the deity of Jesus, Professor Stuart 
must have lost sight of the fact that he was 
making a very strong defence of Universal- 



71 



WHICH WAY 

ism, which was one of the heresies that he 
had solemnly sworn to oppose. But if this 
fact escaped Stuart, it did not so easily get 
by Walter Balfour. He was profoundly dis- 
turbed and even sorely distressed by Stuart's 
words. If the universe is some day to render 
spiritual and divine worship to Christ, what 
is that but Universalism ? 

In the next few years Walter Balfour 
wrote to Moses Stuart nine letters, at inter- 
vals, urging, almost imploring, him to ex- 
plain why the texts he had used do not teach 
Universalism. The nine letters are far from 
being mere repetitions of each other, but con- 
tain a careful study of the whole Bible, and 
an examination of the many other texts that 
appear to teach the same great hope. He en- 
treats the famous Andover professor to ex- 
plain these texts in some way, as against 
the heresy of Universalism he is so solemnly 
pledged to oppose. The nine letters are not 
all sent by post to Professor Stuart, although 
some of them are. They are all printed in 
the "Universalist Magazine" of Boston, and 
are all signed "An Inquirer after Truth." It 
is an interesting fact that all this time no 
one knew who the Inquirer was except the 
Inquirer himself. The editors of the "Uni- 
versalist Magazine" gladly published all the 



72 



WALTER BALFOUR 

letters, but they did not know, and could not 
even guess, who the Inquirer was, although 
they made a number of cunning efforts to 
locate him. For a long time Professor Stuart 
pays no attention to these letters, but finally 
writes to the Magazine a brief note ex- 
plaining his silence. 

He explained that a busy teacher can not 
possibly attempt to reply to anonymous let- 
ters, and also that the nine fetters are simply 
an effort to draw him into a newspaper con- 
troversy with a man whose mind is already 
made up. The unknown Inquirer now dis- 
appears for a long time. He is not a man to 
rush into new opinions without careful study 
and thought. 

In his nine letters he had examined all the 
texts which appear to teach Universalism 
Now he proceeds to study all those texts 
which were commonly thoughtto teach end- 
less punishment. In the quiet obscurity of 
his humble study, unknown to all men, alone 
with his Bible and with his God, for both of 
which no man ever had more loving loyalty 
and reverence, he carries on a long and ex- 
haustive study of every Hebrew or Greek 
word or phrase which the King James trans- 
lators^ 1611, had translated by theEnglish 
words, hell, endless, damnation, devil, end of 



78 



WHICH WAY 

world, etc. He became entirely convinced 
that these modern English words had come 
to have a meaning which the original words 
never had, and so did not truly translate the 
original. 

Balfour became entirely convinced that 
the Bible, rightly understood, is a Univer- 
salist book. Now while Walter Balfour was 
not a man to rush thoughtlessly into new be- 
liefs, it was also true of him that when he 
saw the truth, no considerations of worldly 
prudence, or of personal ease and welfare, 
could for a moment induce him to remain 
silent. Having made up his mind fully as 
to the truth, he no longer conceals himself. 
He announces to the world his new convic- 
tions and that the Inquirer after Truth is 
Walter Balfour. 

Henceforth, to his death, he is a Univer- 
salist writer and preacher of an intensely 
doctrinal type, aggressively defending his 
new-found faith. 

His writings were published in book 
form, and in the libraries of all the older 
Universalists could always be found these 
books, named Balfour's First Inquiry, and 
Balfour's Second Inquiry. The various an- 
swers to and criticisms of these books kept 
Balfour, the rest of his days, in ceaseless 
doctrinal controversy from which he never 

74 



WALTER BALFOUR 

shrank, and of which he did not weary. As 
remarked, all Balfour's works are long ago 
out of print. The warfare of the texts, in 
which he was a master, has receded in its 
power over the minds of the thoughtful, al- 
though as a fact it is yet the way most 
people use the Bible, who use it at all. 

His conviction that the Bible is only one 
book, teaching only one doctrine, has been 
set aside by modern scholars. It must be 
admitted, however, that Walter Balfour had 
a far more scholarly way of marshalling 
Bible texts than Murray ever had, or any 
other exegete of his day knew. His convic- 
tion that the Bible was one book always 
teaching one doctrine, was that held by Chan- 
ning and all other scholars of Balfour's day. 
Balfour's array of texts did, to a degree un- 
usual in his day, remember the whole trend 
of Scripture, and the progressive revelation 
of God found therein. All the truths which 
Balfour defended are easily found to-day in 
other books than those he wrote. Univer- 
salists of to-day regard the work of Balfour 
far too lightly. He was, as each man always 
is, a son of his times, but he was also a man 
for the ages. To an amazing extent the new 
translations of the Bible accept and concede 
the points that Balfour made in his "In- 



75 



WHICH WAY 

quiries." The Universalist Church would be 
to-day a much larger body than it is, if it 
had concentrated on teaching every child 
born in this world, during the formative 
years of its life, the substance of Bible in- 
terpretation which Walter Balfour worked 
out. Universalists, however, waited for Or- 
thodox scholars, in the newer and better 
translations of the Bible, to adopt Balfour's 
contentions, with never a word of credit to 
Balfour, while we, too, forgot him. Because 
the main points for which he contended are 
accepted by us, and conceded by educated lib- 
eral people, we think his work is done and his 
day is past. 

As far as this easy optimism is true — and 
it is truer now than it was in Balfour's day 
— we thank God and take courage. Univer- 
salists have no taste for exalting verbal 
textual theology above the personal experi- 
ence of the Living Chri§t, or above applied 
religion. But let us not forget that, taking 
the whole world over, the vast majority of 
children are yet born and reared in a dark- 
ness unbroken by a ray of Balfour's light 
and hope. The chances are infinitely greater, 
even in this day, that a child will hear the old 
words that Balfour hated, used in all their 
horrid popular meanings, than they are that 



76 



WALTER BALFOUR 

he will be born and reared a child of our cul- 
tured Liberalism. It is yet true, in many 
parts of all our great cities and our own 
country, and of the races of men in Europe 
and Asia and Africa and the islands of the 
seas, that the vast majority holds to angry, 
vengeful gods, to devils and demons, to hells, 
to hatred of enemies, to militarism and sel- 
fish greed, to oppression and exploiting the 
weaker ones. 

Still the world plans wars, and wastes its 
substance on killing and hating, while the 
children die, and we sit in our foolish com- 
placency saying that our Liberal doctrines 
have won the victory, and that we no longer 
need a Universalist Church. "I am happy, 
I am free, what care I for the rest of the 
world!" 

Those who speak that way to-day are the 
men and women possessed with devils, albeit 
respectable and socially recognized devils. 
Against them the Eternal Christ always 
speaks his "Woe to you Pharisees and 
Scribes." 

Walter Balfour, with all his limitations, 
was yet a great and a brave spirit, moving 
along the Way. The world never had 
more need for men of his faith than it has 
this day. 



77 



IX. HELL 

Walter Balfour died on Jan. 3, 1852, as 
peacefully as if he had never fought a theo- 
logical battle in his life. 

Moses Stuart died the next day, appar- 
ently serene in spite of his Andover creed. 
It is not likely that he has signed that docu- 
ment every five years since 1852, any more 
than the rest of the Andover Professors 
have. Undoubtedly Stuart and Balfour 
have both long rejoiced that the former de- 
creases and the latter increases as far as 
dogmatic theology is concerned. They are 
both always adjusting their creeds to the 
larger knowledge and life. 

In 1877, Balfour's body having been in 
its grave a quarter of a century, Canon 
Farrar stood in the pulpit of Westminster 
Abbey and preached a sermon on "Hell, what 
it is not," and lo, Walter Balfour lives again, 
reincarnated. In this sermon Farrar spoke 
a sentence that caught the ear of the world. 
Here is his sentence: 

"Now I ask you, my brethren, where would be 
those popular teachings about hell, — the kind of 
teachings which I have quoted to you and described 
— if we calmly and deliberately, by substituting the 
true translations, erased from our English Bibles, 
as being inadequate or erroneous, or disputed ren- 



78 



HELL 

derings, the three words, 'hell,' 'damnation,' and 
'everlasting?' Yet I say unhesitatingly, I say 
claiming the fullest right to speak on this point, I 
say with the calmest and most unflinching sense 
of responsibility, I say standing here in the sight of 
my God and my Saviour, and it may be of the angels 
and spirits of the dead — that not one of these three 
expressions ought to stand any longer in our Eng- 
lish Bibles, and that being, in our present accepta- 
tion of them, in the notion that is which all unedu- 
cated persons attach to them, simply mistransla- 
tions, they most unquestionably will not stand un- 
explained in the revised version of the Bible, if the 
revisers have understood their duty." 

All this is just what Walter Balfour said 
twenty-five years before, only he said it 
in shorter and better English sentences. 
Universalists waited for a quarter of a cen- 
tury for a Canon of the Church of England 
to say, in a way that made the world listen, 
what their own Balfour said first. 

The revisers to whom Parrar referred 
were the English and American scholars, 
then at work together, revising the King 
James Version of 1611 into the Revised Bible 
published in 1885; and it is interesting to 
note what these scholars did on the points 
Farrar named. The fact is, however, that 
the Revised Bible of 1885, while an improve- 
ment on the King James in some ways, was 
inferior to it in other ways, and has never 
come into general use. That version of 1885 



79 



WHICH WAY 

being published, the English scholars dis- 
banded. 

The American scholars, however, kept 
together and continued their careful studies. 
The result was the American Standard Ver- 
sion of 1901. Although this American Bible 
is not final or perfect, it is the best existing 
translation of the original Scriptures into 
English that has yet been made, with any- 
large body of scholarship behind it. 

Since 1901 several scholarly Orthodox 
individuals have translated the original 
Greek New Testament into our English 
speech, the most successful perhaps being 
Moffatt and Weymouth. These translations 
of the Bible are put into the hands of the 
students to-day in all liberal Orthodox 
seminaries, as acceptable. 

This American Standard Version and the 
translations by Moffatt and Weymouth are 
what we refer to as the New Bible. 

By the Old Bible we mean the King 
James version of 1611. The interesting fact 
is that this New Bible concedes every point 
that Balfour and Farrar advocated. In the 
Old Testament of the New Bible, the word 
"hell" does not once occur. In the New Tes- 
tament of the American Bible it occurs thir- 
teen times in the text, but each time in the 



80 



HELL 

marginal notes gives the true original word, 
as Farrar said it should do. In Moffatt and 
Weymouth, however, the word "hell" is not 
once used, not even in margins. 

This fact is not known as it should be. 
There is no Concordance of the New Bible. 
All existing English Concordances are of the 
Old Bible. Nearly all the Sunday School 
lessons, and printed explanations of Scrip- 
ture for our children, refer only to the Old 
Bible. The Old Bible is still the text read 
from most pulpits, and insistently used by 
revivalists. All the published debates of our 
fathers are based on the Old Bible. 

Age has endeared it to millions, its words 
are familiar, its English hard to improve. 
The result is that the people know little or 
nothing about the New Bible, if indeed they 
know much of any. As far as the words and 
phrases that Balfour and Farrar referred to, 
the Old Bible still keeps the popular mind in 
the greatest possible ignorance. Universal- 
ists should insist on the New Bible, and see to 
it that every person knows the facts that 
Balfour stood for. If a preacher prefers the 
Old Bible for his pulpit services, he should at 
least, as he reads, translate or use correctly 
and intelligently the words that Farrar spoke 
of. The truth is easily accessible and per- 
fectly simple. 

81 



WHICH WAY 

The word "hell" in the Old Bible is 
always a translation of some one of four 
original words. The four words are "sheol," 
"hades," "tartarus" and "gehenna." All 
these are now perfectly good English words. 

Any intelligent person that has access to 
an unabridged dictionary can find out what 
these four words mean, as easily as he can 
find out the meaning of any other English 
words. The definitions given in the un- 
abridged dictionary are sometimes such as 
are made by old school .Orthodoxy, to be sure, 
but a careful study of all the meanings given 
makes the matter clear enough. If by the 
word "hell" we mean a literal lake of mate- 
rial fire, into which the wicked are cast, and 
where they are kept alive for endless tor- 
ture, as the popular mind has always thought 
of the word, then nothing is clearer than the 
fact that not one of the four original words 
ever meant "hell" and that not that word, or 
any other single English word, can truly 
translate the original. That is what Balfour 
and Farrar claimed, and that is what the 
New Bible concedes. Take a brief glance at 
the facts about the four original words. The 
Old Testament word is "sheol." It occurs 
sixty-four times. In the Old Bible it was 
translated twenty-nine times by the English 



82 



HELL 

word "grave," three times by "pit" and 
thirty-two times by "hell." In the New Bible 
sheol is not translated at all, but the original 
word is printed in the text the whole sixty- 
four times exactly as Farrar and Balfour 
said it should be. 

So in the New Bible "hell" does not occur 
once in the entire Old Testament. It may 
be still pertinent to ask the question, "If the 
doctrine of hell is as important as revivalists 
and preachers of the old type claim that it 
is, how could God let mankind go in igno- 
rance of it down to the time of our New 
Testament?" 

The next word to notice is "hades." 
This is a Greek word occurring only in the 
New Testament, and there eleven times. 
The Old Bible translated this word ten times 
by "hell" and once by "grave." 

Even the King James translators could 
not bring themselves to say when they 
reach 1 Cor. 15:55, "O hell, where is thy 
victory," so they used the word "grave," and 
the New Bible does the same, or uses the 
word "death." In the other ten passages 
where "hades" is used it is not translated at 
all, but brought over as an English word, as 
it should be. Anyone can look up the word 
"hades" in any good English dictionary and 



83 



WHICH WAY 

ascertain its meaning. It certainly never 
meant "hell." 

It may be interesting to note that the 
Bible never said that the rich man was in 
"hell," but in "hades," which is a very dif- 
ferent idea. 

The third word that the Old Bible trans- 
lated "hell" is "tartarus." The one and only 
time that word occurs in any Bible is in 
2 Peter, 2:4. For some unknown reason, 
when the American Revisers came to this 
passage, they departed from their excellent 
plan by which they had brought sheol and 
hades untranslated over into the English 
text, and they rendered "tartarus" by "hell." 
However, they printed in the marginal note 
the explanation, "or tartarus," so no reader 
need be perplexed. Moffatt and Weymouth, 
with more consistency, print the original 
word in the text, as they should. Any dic- 
tionary defines this word clearly. Whatever 
Peter meant by it he certainly did not mean 
"hell," as he says plainly that it was a dark 
place where the wicked awaited judgment, 
and so no finality at all. 

The last of the four words which the 
Bible translated "hell" is "gehenna." This 
is a compound of two words, one of which 
means land or valley, the other word being 



84 



HELL 

Hinnom, a family name. Any reader of the 
Old Testament can learn all it teaches about 
the Valley of Hinnom, by reading, carefully, 
Joshua 15 :8 and 2 Kings 23 :10 and Jeremiah 
7:31, and verses following. The valley was 
originally beautiful, but, for reasons Jere- 
miah makes clear, it became an abhorred 
spot. At the time of Jesus it was the symbol 
of sin and its consequences. The Jews un- 
derstood the reference; in addressing the 
Gentiles the word was probably never used. 

The word "gehenna" occurs twelve 
times, and in the Old Bible was invariably 
translated "hell." James used it once, when 
he said the tongue was an unruly member 
set on fire of gehenna. The other eleven 
times — really, counting repetitions in the 
Gospels, it is only eight times — the word was 
used by Jesus himself. This fact has made 
gehenna the most impressive of the four 
words. 

The word is not found in the Septuagint, 
nor the Apocrypha, nor in any classical 
Greek author, and was never used by Paul, 
nor Peter, nor John, nor, with the exception 
noted of James, by any New Testament 
writer. 

One can only wonder, if the fact that 
Jesus alone used the word seemed as im- 



85 



WHICH WAY 

pressive to them as it does to us, why it is 
not used everywhere in the New Testament. 
The Old Bible always translates the word 
"hell." The American Bible does the same, 
but always explains in the marginal note, "or 
gehenna." Weymouth and Moffatt follow 
their invariable rule with all the four words, 
and do not translate at all, but print in the 
text the originals. Any good English dic- 
tionary will inform the reader what gehenna 
means, although Universalists are likely to 
think that the definitions are sometimes 
given an unwarranted orthodox slant. 

Here is the conclusion of the whole mat- 
ter then. The old word "hell" has gone out 
of the New Bible except that it appears in 
the American Version thirteen times, where 
the original word is always given in the 
marginal note. From Weymouth and 
Moffatt it has disappeared entirely, and 
everywhere the original words are printed in 
the text and left untranslated. 

Modern Universalists and liberals often 
use the word in a sense of their own, as 
Sherman's statement that "War is Hell," or 
Dr. Newton's, when he discourses so truly in 
his book on "The Mercies of Hell," or Dr. 
Adams, who insists that he "believes in hells 
because he has seen so many of them." 



86 



HELL 

Probably these genial Liberals are using the 
word in a sense that fairly well translates 
the original words. But they are sure 
always to be misunderstood. It is a serious 
question if they would not do better to drop 
a word that has gathered around it such ter- 
ribly false and wicked popular meanings to 
a large portion of mankind. 

Has the New Bible, in thus either drop- 
ping "hell" entirely, or else giving the true 
word always in the margin, made any dif- 
ference about the facts of sin and its se- 
quences? It has made this most vital and 
important difference: It has added im- 
mensely to the solemnity and impressiveness 
of these facts. 

The Old Bible, undeservedly,|butnone the 
less truly, had come to mean to millions that 
the sequences of sin could be postponed or 
even evaded. These sequences were thought 
by many to be artificial, arbitrary, escapable, 
revengeful, hateful, cruel, useless, endless 
and hopeless. Because of these dreadful 
misapprehensions, the world forgot the im- 
pressive truth about punishment for sin, or 
else treated it lightly as a flippant joke or as 
a profane oath. 

The world has no greater need than that 
of a real revival of the conviction of the cer- 



87 



WHICH WAY 

tainty of just retribution for sin. The New 
Bible, by bringing back the old impressive 
symbolic words, enables the thoughtful 
preacher or teacher to drive home to the con- 
sciences of men the truth about sin and its 
sequences. 

This truth is that the sequences are re- 
lated to the sin, as reaping is to sowing. 
These sequences are not delayed, evaded or 
forgotten. Our fathers at Winchester de- 
clared that holiness and happiness are in- 
separably connected, which in their minds of 
course implied that sin and unhappiness are 
also bound together. Cause and effect are 
the modern account of sin and its results. 
The old evil word "hell" should be left out 
of our vocabularies. 

In the popular mind it involves the most 
dangerous conclusions. Well done, Walter 
Balfour! Well done, Canon Farrar! Uni- 
versalists salute you. The New Bible for 
the New Age admits your noble contention 
that the word "hell" has outlived its useful- 
ness if it ever had any, and should now be 
forever dismissed from buman speech. 



88 



X. DAMNATION 

What a profane word to print as the 
heading of a chapter in a modern book. For 
a long time mothers have washed out the 
children's mouths with soap to punish them 
for uttering this word, and to make them re- 
member never to do it again. The angry 
child, however, who had never heard of any 
Bible but the old King J^mes version, might 
truthfully have made what would seem like 
a good defence by affirming that he was only 
using a good Bible word, which the minis- 
ters use often. So things reached that 
strange pass where the Bible and the preach- 
ers taught the children to say a word which 
fathers and mothers punished them for 
using. In King James's time the word had 
not taken on such an ugly meaning and was 
not counted as profane.^ It still has its uses 
in books on law. 

Damnation is one of the three words 
which Farrar said would not longer be in 
our English Bible if the revisers understood 
their duty, and that was what Balfour said. 
Balfour, in his First and Second Inquiries, 
had given all who would read him a complete 
account of the word "hell," and also of this 
word "damnation," as used in the Bible. 



89 



WHICH WAY 

Let us see how it is in the New Bible with 
these bad words "damned," "damnable" 
and "damnation." 

The plain truth is that even in the Old 
Bible, while the originals of these words 
occur about 214 times, they were invariably 
translated correctly by the words "judge" or 
"condemn," with the strange exception of 
only fifteen texts. Just why the scholars of 
1611 translated the original words correctly 
about two hundred times, and then went out 
of their way to translate them fifteen times 
by "damn" or its cognate words, is a mystery. 
Of course, it is to be remembered always, as 
has been said, that the words did not have 
the ugly sound to their ears that they have 
taken on in our day. 

The interesting fact is that Balfour and 
Farrar have come to have their way abso- 
lutely here, and the words do not even once 
occur in the New Bible. 

Countless people and families to-day have 
never known the Bible, or if they ever read 
it, have dismissed it from their lives. This 
is an irreparable loss both for individual 
character and for family life. Before they 
dismiss or ignore this best and greatest re- 
ligious literature, they should at least hear it 
rightly read. Any teacher or preacher who 



90 



DAMNATION 

to-day reads in public the Old Bible, and 
speaks aloud the word which heads this chap- 
ter, is not only false to the real Bible, but 
misses and obscures its most impressive 
meanings. 

The Bible, rightly translated, is im- 
mensely more useful than any version can 
possibly be where we hold to the words be- 
cause they are good English or familiar to 
our ears, when such words do not truly say 
what the original writers meant to say. 

It takes only a page to look at the whole 
fifteen times that the Old Bible said 
"damned," "damnation," or "damnable," 
and to see clearly how much more impressive 
the true translations, "judge" or "con- 
demn," are. 

The writer of 2 Peter did not say "dam- 
nable heresies," or "their damnation slum- 
bereth not," but he did say "destructive 
heresies," or fatal divisions, and "their 
condemnation slumbereth not." It is far 
more useful for all of us to be taught that 
moral and ethical heresies are destructive, 
and that judgment for them slumbereth 
not, that it is not postponed, than it is to try 
to scare us with a pagan idea of a lake of 
fire in some future existence. 

In Matt. 23:14 and Mark 12:40, and 



91 



WHICH WAY 

Luke 20 :47, the words "greater damnation," 
which do not translate to us what Jesus said, 
are far less impressive than the "greater 
condemnation" or "severer punishment," 
which give us his true meaning. 

The "damnation of hell" which the Old 
Bible prints in Matt. 23 :33, is far less force- 
ful than "the judgment of gehenna," which 
is what Jesus said. Some Jews may have 
understood Jesus to mean, by gehenna, lit- 
eral material fire in a future world. It is 
certain, however, that many did not so un- 
derstand him, and it is certain that to-day 
the material figure of gehenna, used as a 
symbol of the spiritual law of the awful and 
certain sequences of sin in the soul, finds an 
assent in the minds of the thoughtful, who 
cannot for a moment accept the word as the 
name of a material place in a future world 
of spirits. 

In Mark 3:29, the Old Bible said that 
some were "in danger of eternal damnation," 
but surely it is truer to the meaning of Jesus 
to say, with Weymouth, that some are 
guilty of the sin of the ages. 

A "resurrection to judgment" is far truer 
than a "resurrection to damnation" can be, 
as the Old Bible printed it in John 5 :29. 

In Romans, third chapter, and also in 



92 



DAMNATION 

chapter thirteen, the Old Bible said of some 
that their damnation was just, or that they 
should receive damnation. Surely the New 
Bible is better here when it says condemna- 
tion or judgment. 

It is, indeed, a fearsome thing to say that 
a person who partakes of the communion 
incorrectly eats and drinks damnation, as the 
Old Bible does say in 1 Cor. 11 :29. But it is 
always true that any person who enters into 
that or any other service with low and im- 
proper motives, is "judged" for it, as the 
New Bible declares. It sounds harsh to hear 
Paul, in 1 Tim. 5:12, saying what the Old 
Bible puts in his mouth, that young women 
who marry again will be damned, and then 
a few verses further on advising them to 
marry. But it is true, proved by all human 
experience, that either men or women who 
marry unadvisedly or lightly, for improper 
motives, are "condemned." 

It is hard to believe that all those un- 
believers that the Old Bible tells us of in the 
doubtful passage, Mark 16:16, shall be 
damned, because they cannot do the miracles 
listed in the following verses. 

But it is amply proved that all who will 
not believe the truth are condemned, and 
"this is their condemnation, that Light has 



93 



WHICH WAY 

come into the world, and they loved dark- 
ness rather than light, because their deeds 
are evil." 

So it is in every case where the Old Bible 
used the dreadful words that have come to 
sound so profane to modern ears. The New 
Bible omits them every one and prints the 
true English translations. In so doing the 
New Bible gains immeasurably in impres- 
siveness and in its power to awaken care- 
less and sinful men to a conviction of their 
profound spiritual peril. 

No person with a grain of intelligence 
will find in this fact that the New Bible omits 
"damned" and its cognates ground for saying 
that it makes light of sin. The true words, 
which the New Bible uses, are vastly more 
searching and more solemn. 

Nothing is gained, much is lost, by keep- 
ing the old false words before the people. 
Now is the judgment of this world. To-day 
all human motives must be put beside the 
motives of Jesus. If they are of his Way, 
they stand approved ; if they are of any other 
way, their judgment, or condemnation, 
begins at once, and never ceases until the 
wrong motives are destroyed and the right 
motives accepted. 



94 



DAMNATION 



Balfour and Farrar were right about the 
words this chapter deals with. They were 
men of the Way. 



95 



XL ENDLESS TORMENT 

The third word that Canon Farrar in his 
great sermon, with great solemnity, de- 
clared should be expunged from our English 
Bible, is the word "everlasting." Presum- 
ably he meant that that word should not be 
applied to sin and to its punishments as 
necessarily meaning endless. 

That was what Walter Balfour affirmed. 
But that the word should never be used in the 
Bible, in any connection, is not a contention 
that Universalists usually make, and can 
hardly be a point that Farrar would defend. 

Universalists may be mildly interested in 
the fact that the word "endless" was never 
used but twice in any English Bible, and in 
neither case was it applied to punishment. 
In Timothy we read of "endless genealogies" 
and in Hebrews the beautiful words, "the 
power of an endless life," and these are the 
only times when the Bible calls anything 
endless. 

As to "everlasting," while it was many 
times applied to life and to salvation, it is 
worth noting that the Bible never once spoke 
of everlasting death, or everlasting hell. Had 
Balfour and Farrar had our New Bible they 
might have truly affirmed that the phrase 



96 



ENDLESS TORMENT 

"everlasting punishment" never once 
occurs. The fact is that the New Bible 
almost uniformly substitutes the word "eter- 
nal" for the older word "everlasting." 

Nothing more clearly shows the useless- 
ness of any modern concordance to a reader 
of the New Bible than does a study of this 
word "everlasting." According to any con- 
cordance you will find this word twenty-six 
times in the New Testament. But the truth 
is that in the New Testament of the New 
Bible you will find the word "everlasting" 
only once, this single example being in 
Jude 6. 

Jude thought that the fallen angels were 
kept in "everlasting" bonds unto the judg- 
ment of the great day. Apparently the ever- 
lasting bonds were not in his mind endless, 
as the great day was the limit of them. Uni- 
versalists have never claimed him as one of 
them, with any great confidence. But, on 
the other hand, when we read Jude as Wey- 
mouth translates him, we find him affirming 
"the fire of the ages" as all Universalists 
do. That such fires may go out after they 
have performed their office Jude does not 
deny. 

Excepting Jude, the New Testament of 
the New Bible always uses the word "eter- 



97 



WHICH WAY 

nal." The words mean the same but the uni- 
form translation is an improvement. 

Take, for instance, the text in Matt. 25, 
about which so much controversy has waged. 
In the Old Bible it read, "These shall go away 
into everlasting punishment, but the right- 
eous into eternal life." The American ver- 
sion prints, "These shall go away into eter- 
nal punishment, but the righteous into eter- 
nal life," which is a better version than the 
old. 

But the truest version of all is that of 
Weymouth, "These shall go away into the 
punishment of the ages, and the righteous 
into the life of the ages." 

This last translation is the one for which 
Balfour contended, all his life, and Uni- 
versalists think that it truly renders the 
original. 

The "punishment of the ages" is a far 
more searching and expressive phrase than 
is "endless" or "everlasting" or "eternal" 
punishment, with the popular meanings 
these words have come to have. 

The mind of the original writer is the 
best mind to look for when you read the 
Bible. 

That sin leads individuals, and groups of 
individuals we call society, into the"punish- 



98 



ENDLESS TORMENT 

ment of the ages," is exactly what all honest 
observers know and believe, and the words 
are none too strong to express the facts. 

The "time" words of the Bible are com- 
monly the word "aion," or some form of that 
word. The Old Testament Hebrew word is 
a different one, but as in the Septuagint that 
word was almost uniformly translated by 
some form of aion, we may say that, for the 
purposes of the English reader, that word is 
the Bible "time" word. 

Now "aion" and "aionian" are no 
longer simply Greek words, from a dead 
language. With a slight change in spelling 
they have become perfectly good English 
words, which anybody can find, any time, in 
any good English dictionary. 

For instance, referring to the Century 
Dictionary, one will find the spelling "eon" 
and "eonian," and every intelligent speaker 
of English knows what these words mean. 
Eon means "an age, a long period of exist- 
ence, a lifetime, a long space of time, eter- 
nity, a secular period either definite, or lim- 
ited to the duration of something, as a dis- 
pensation, or the universe, used as equiva- 
lent to an age, era, or cycle, and sometimes 
to eternity," so reads the Century Diction- 
ary. The adjective form of the word is 



99 



WHICH WAY 

eonian, and the meaning given is ' 'lasting for 
an age, perpetual, eternal, lasting for eons 
or ages, everlasting." As an example of the 
usage of these words, Whittier's poem, "An- 
drew Rykman's Prayer," is quoted : 

"Some sweet morning yet, in God's 

Dim, aeonian periods, 
Joyful, I shall wake to see 

Those I love, who rest in Thee." 

These words had all /these varied meaningsin 
Bible times precisely as they have to-day. 
They have as many shades of meaning as 
most other English words have. They may 
take on the meaning of endlessness; they 
more commonly mean a limited period of 
time. 

In Isaiah 63 :12, the name of God is called 
eonian, and in Deuteronomy 15 :17 the same 
word is applied to the life of a slave. No 
one can affirm that the Bible teaches, or that 
the church fathers taught, "endless" punish- 
ment, simply because they call such punish- 
ment eonian. The word is applied to many 
things that end. Every intelligent reader 
judges the time length meant by noting the 
object to which the words are applied. The 
eonian God, or Christ, or the Way of Life, 
mean endless, not simply on account of the 
adjective used, but also because our minds 



100 



ENDLESS TORMENT 

cannot think of them as ending. On the 
other hand, hills are not endless, although 
the Bible calls them eonian, because every- 
body knows that erosive forces are constantly 
levelling the hills. Eternal or eonian punish- 
ment can only be thought of as endless by 
assuming that it has no purpose. If the pun- 
ishments of God have a loving and healing 
purpose, they must continue until that pur- 
pose is accomplished, and then must cease. 

That eons pass without this gracious pur- 
pose being accomplished, we must, alas, a I 
rnit, but that God is endlessly defeated Uni- 
versalists will not admit. 

Farrar declared that he often heard the 
same old argument that Balfour and Ballou 
were always meeting, namely, that since both 
heaven and hell, reward and punishment, are 
described by the same word, eonian, they 
must last the same length of time. They say 
that if eonian punishment is not endless then 
eonian life is not either. This strikes the 
Universalist as about as convincing an ar- 
gument as it would be to assert that when a 
hat and a monument are both called "high" 
they must therefore be the same height. 
Will any reader of the last verses of Romans, 
when he reads times that are past called 
eternal, and in the next verse finds God 



101 



S 



WHICH WAY 

called eternal, desire to argue that they must 
last the same length of time, because they 
are described by the same adjective? 

Farrar challenged his critics, who in- 
sisted that the same word must always mean 
the same thing, to apply that opinion, if they 
dared to, to the text, "As in Adam all die, 
even so in Christ shall all be made alive." 

Thus we see that the New Bible, rightly 
translating original words, never teaches 
endless, nor everlasting, nor eternal tor- 
ment or punishment. It does always 
teach the infinitely more impressive 
truth of "the punishment of the ages." 

The fine phrase "eternal life" occurs 
forty-two times in the American Bible, but 
the term eternal death never occurred even 
once in any Bible. Always do Weymouth 
and Moifatt translate the terms "the life of 
the ages" and "the punishment of the ages." 
In both of these every rational being must 
always solemnly believe. 

Surprisingly, therefore, most gratify- 
ingly, does the New Bible recognize and en- 
dorse the main ideas that Walter Balfour 
lived teaching, and died believing, many 
years ago. 



102 



XII. THE END OF THE WORLD 

One of our newer American poets has 
woven into his verse the idea, common in 
some quarters, that this world is soon to 
come to an end, "some say by ice, and some 
by fire." 

Some scientific writers think that they 
have observed a certain indifference to all 
attempts to better this human race, arising 
from the belief that the world is cooling and 
that in three or four thousand years more it 
will be too cold to admit of human life, and 
that that time is too short to accomplish any- 
thing in the slow evolution of mankind, and 
so efforts for betterment are useless and 
hopeless. 

Often this indifference sinks into despair, 
or into absolute brute selfishness, many ask- 
ing, "What's the use?" This conclusion may 
or may not be scientific, but it is always easy 
for indolent and selfish spirits. Only the 
noble resist it. 

Professor Chamberlain, of the University 
of Chicago, has recently sharply rebuked 
these people, by emphasizing his own convic- 
tion that this earth will be here, and be hab- 
itable by man, not simply thousands, but eons 
of years yet to be. To him there is no scien- 
tific basis whatever for expecting an imme- 
diate end of the world. 



103 



WHICH WAY 

However, this expectation of the end of 
the world has come far more from theologi- 
cal teachings than it has from any scientific 
knowledge, as far as the popular mind is 
concerned. 

The King James Bible teaches the end of 
the world in seven different passages, and re- 
fers to the "last day," the "great day" and 
"the end" many times more. It is true that, 
all their lives, Balfour and Ballou and our 
spiritual fathers contended that these texts 
did not refer to the material planet, earth, at 
all, but to the end of an age, and undoubtedly 
they convinced a few that this is the truth. 

But as long as "the end of the world" 
stood there in the Bible seven times recur- 
ring, and preachers, even Universalist 
preachers, read it just as that old Bible had 
it, because it was good English, or sacred, so 
long the millions believed it literally, and 
accused these fathers of ours of wresting 
scripture to their own destruction, when they 
questioned this popular meaning. 

Does not Jesus say in Matthew, thirteenth 
chapter, and in other places, that "the har- 
vest is the end of the world," and "so shall 
it be at the end of the world ? " Paul says,in 
1 Cor. 10:11, that certain things are written 
for admonition to those "upon whom the end 



104 



THB END OP THE WORLD 

of the world has come," and Heb. 9 :26 affirms 
that Christ hath now appeared once, "in the 
end of the world," to put away sin. 

As long as men read the Old Bible, simply 
because it is venerable and sacred, and be- 
cause its English is hardi to improve, so long 
will the common man either expect the end ;of 
the world, or else throw his Bible into the 
junk heap. 

Turning now to the American Standard 
Bible, we find a peculiar fact. In the pas- 
sages just quoted from Corinthians and from 
Hebrews, we find these^revisers saying "the 
end of the ages," which is exactly what our 
fathers, for a century and more, have said 
that it should be. But when these same re- 
visers come to the same words in the Gospels, 
they print the old translation, "the end of 
the world," although in each case they do 
print in a marginal note, "or the consumma- 
tion of the age." They were scared lest the 
end of the world would come, if they departed 
from the old false words, "the end of the 
world," in the text, although with much fear 
and trembling they did admit the truth in a 
margin. They moved a little, however, and 
Universalists are thankful for even small 
concessions. 

Weymouth, however, invariably — there 



105 



WHICH WAY 

is no exception — prints "the close of the 
age," ending the Gospel of Matthew with t the 
beautiful words, "And remember, I am with 
you always, day by day, until the close of 
the age." 

It is therefore now conceded that the 
Bible really never once speaks of this planet 
earth as ending, but that seven times it uses 
the phrase "the consummation of the age," 
or better, in Weymouth, "the close of the 
age." 

If the Universalists had really concen- 
trated on their special job, instead of wait- 
ing for Weymouth and other Orthodox 
scholars to attend to it for them,bythistime 
every child born would have known before 
he got out of the "teen" age that the words 
"hell," "damnation," "endless torment," and 
"end of the world," are not one of them 
properly in the Bible. The Bible, rightly 
translated, teaches none of the horrifying 
falsehoods that have made this world a cham- 
ber of horrors instead of our Father's House, 
and the insane asylum of the universe in- 
stead of God's beautiful home for His ra- 
tional children, which He designed it to be. 

What is meant by "the close of the age" 
which the Bible teaches?. Many devout Jews 
at the time of Jesus, and 'for some time before 



106 



THE END OF THE WORLD 

and after his day, lived in expectation of a 
Messiah. Such Jews divided time into three 
divisions. The time before this Messiah was 
the present age, the time when he arrived 
was the close of the age^nd the time follow- 
ing his coming was the "new" or the "Mes- 
sianic" or the "Christ" age. 

Running through the Bible are such 
phrases as that day, last day, last days, last 
time, last times, great day, day of wrath, day 
of the Lord, and so on. 

To the popular mind, knowing only the 
Old Bible, and the common way of present- 
ing that from the pulpit and in the Sunday 
Schools, these expressions have all come to 
mean the day one dies and goes up into the 
sky to there stand before the judgment seat 
of Christ, from which they will be sent to 
an endless material heaven or hell. But 
these words as used in the Bible never 
meant these things at all. 

The "day" was not when you died and 
went up into the sky, but it always meant the 
day when Jesus came to you as the Christ, 
or the Messiah. Nowhere in the Bible is this 
day far postponed. That present age, in 
which the Jews — God's chosen people they 
are certain — are oppressed, is very soon to 
end, and a new heavenly age, a Messianic, or 
Christ, age is to be ushered in. That gen- 

107 



WHICH WAY 

eration shall not pass until it comes, some 
s:anding there shall see it come. 

That expectation took many forms. The 
Psalmist exultingly sang, "For he cometh, 
he cometh, to judge the earth." In Daniel 
God and His Angels are to suddenly appear 
in three and a half years from the writer's 
time, to destroy that present bad world 
order, or age, under which Jews are suffer- 
ing, and set up the new age, in which they 
should gloriously rule the world from Jeru- 
salem. Haggai thinks that Zerubbabel is this 
Messiah. Many thought Judas Maccabeus 
was the one. Devout Jews looked for the 
Day, with a confidence surpassing the zeal 
with which the Germans exulted in that feel- 
ing, previous to 1918, and not a few of them 
in their secret souls still exult in it. Often 
the Jews looked for "The Day" in the same 
militaristic spirit that too much animated 
Germany. Sometimes they thought it was 
ethical, and would come when they repented 
of their sins. Sometimes it seemed to them 
to be ritualistic, delayed until they rebuilt 
the Temple and established the ritual ser- 
vice, under a holy priesthood. Sometimes it 
was truly a spiritual expectation, as in the 
words, "Remember I am with you day by 
day, 



108 



>> 



THE END OF THE WORLD 

Sometimes they expected a fighter, a 
lineal son of David, and sometimes they 
thought the Messiah would be a supernat- 
ural man let down from heaven into their 
midst. But whichever of these many forms 
the Messianic expectation took, it never 
meant dying and going up into the sky, as 
it has so strangely come to mean with many 
preachers and teachers to-day. 

In the Gospels, the end of the age is con- 
nected with the destruction of Jerusalem and 
the Temple, and the attending awful calam- 
ities that came on the Jewish people then. 

The New Testament exhortation is to 
watch for this day, which comes like a thief 
in the night. Be prepared for that coming, 
as wise virgins take oil in their lamps when 
the bridegroom comes to the wedding feast. 

In most of its shapes there was not an 
atom of Universalism, nor of the religion of 
Jesus, in these Messianic expectations. When 
the Messiah came he was to torment and 
destroy and take vengeance on the enemies 
of God's elect. Not much is said about for- 
giving these enemies, or loving those who 
did them such sore evils. Knowing human 
nature, it would have been a miracle if they 
had expected that, and yet that miracle did 
happen, and we know of scores of martyrs 



109 



WHICH WAY 

whosuffered horribly and died with the won- 
derful words of Jesus on their lips, "Father, 
forgive them." But in some of its forms the 
expectation of the end of that old world, or 
age, or eon, was a crude and unholy appeal to 
militarism and brute force, and revengeful 
destruction. 

Let us hope and believe, however, that 
there was always a true elect, of the quiet 
and devout, who saw the vision of the end of 
that age of hate and war, and the coming in 
of the Christ age of justice and of love. But 
whether the expected end of the world and 
the coming of the Day was held crudely and 
materially, or thoughtfully and spiritually, 
all alike understood that it was not an event 
to be long deferred. No one thought of it 
as meaning to die and to go up into the sky 
to meet Christ on a heavenly judgment seat, 
The expectation was rather of a Christ and 
from which souls are sent to heaven or hell, 
all his holy angels coming to this earth, in 
the generation then present, and establishing 
his judgment seat here. No stranger per- 
version of a great literature has been known 
tv»an is this popular view that the Bible 
teaches the end of this planet earth and a 
transfer of all human and divine activities to 
the skies. 



no 



THE END OF THE WORLD 

The end of the world never meant the 
end of this planet earth. To the Jew it 
meant the end of the eon that saw him op- 
pressed by foreign nations, and the coming 
of the eon that made his people first on earth 
and his city the center of the universe. 

To some of the reporters of Jesus, the 
end of the world meant the end of the eon 
of Scribes and Pharisees, against whom 
Jesus pronounced those awful woes in the 
twenty-third chapter of Matthew, and the 
destruction of their city and temple, and the 
coming of the eon of Christ. In the book of 
Revelation it meant the end of all who per- 
secuted the Christians, and the setting up of 
a Christian world. 

The concept is often held in a material 
^elfish way as expecting a physical Christ, 
to give material bliss to his friends and de- 
struction of endless torture to his enemies. 

The "end of the eon" concept also easily 
lends itself to the finest expression of the 
noblest human hopes. The soul of mankind 
has always dreamed, and it yet dreams, of 
the end of the wicked brute eons, and the 
coming of the real Christ day. No well 
taught man thinks of this as deferred until 
death, or as happening in the sky. They 



in 



WHICH WAY 

pray, 'Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done 
on earth." 

Tennyson was strictly in the spirit of this 
best meaning of the Bible, when he wrote : 

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease, 
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold, 
Ring out the thousand years of old. 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

"Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand. 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be." 

Our Universalist fathers were given to 
this fine poetic spiritualizing of the Bible 
references to the end of the world. They 
probably at times read these spiritual 
meanings into words that the writer intend- 
ed to have literal meanings^ 

The end of the world was the end of all 
sin, of all that was against God's will, and 
the coming in of the age of the rule of Jesus 
in every human soul. This was what Bal- 
four and Ballou saw as they blazed their 
pioneer path, which path shall yet widen 
into the King's Highway. 

Their mistakes, if they made them, were 
generally somehow mistakes in the right 
direction. 



112 



XIII. THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS 

As we have seen, the thoughtful reader 
of the Bible finds himself in an atmosphere 
of keen expectation and belief that an old eon 
is closing; that the last days are here; that 
Messiah or Christ is at the door; that the 
new and glorious eon is even now to be 
ushered in. The main question is, in the 
New Testament, "Is Jesus this expected Mes- 
siah or Christ ?" To believe in Jesus means 
to believe that he is this Messiah, and to 
believe this, saves. 

The New Testament makers had much 
difficulty in making the career of Jesus fit 
any expectation they had ever had of what 
the Messiah would be and do. 

How could a teacher who was poor, who 
was a servant of all, for peace and love and 
forgiveness of enemies, and especially how 
could one who was crucified, be the Christ? 
No Messianic expectation had ever taken that 
shape. They are sorely perplexed for a time. 

This perplexity is seen almost at the be- 
ginning of Jesus' career, when John sends 
to ask him if he is really the Christ or are 
they to look for another, and a closing word 
is a despairing cry, "we were hoping that it 
was he who was about to ransom Israel/' 



113 



WHICH WAY 

But to the ordinary reader, almost with- 
out any break, this perplexity and despair 
changes to certainty. In some way, not 
made very clear to us, they came to believe 
that Jesus was the Messiah or Christ; that it 
was necessary that he should suffer and die 
and pass into the heavens ; but his stay there 
is to be very brief, he is very soon to return 
down from these heavens, with a shout, with 
a trumpet, with all his holy angels with him, 
and set up his judgment seat of power and 
glory here in the earth. 

This expectation is known as the doctrine 
of the second coming of Jesus and it surely 
was the expectation of all the New Testa- 
ment writers, and in some form is the ex- 
pectation of all Christians. 

There are sharp differences of opinion as 
to the time and the mannerof this comingof 
Jesus and the setting up of his kingdom, but 
the conviction that the Person of Jesus 
comes, that he is a living and moving Pres- 
ence in this world, and that he is evermore 
to be such a living Presence until the king- 
doms of this world become his kingdoms, 
these convictions are the very soul of Chris- 
tianity. 

This topic, which has filled volumes, can 
hardly be condensed into a short chapter in 



114 



THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS 

a small book, but perhaps opinions of it can 
be itemized. 

The second coming of Jesus and the set- 
ting up of his kingdom are usually con- 
nected events; both these events are con- 
nected with the destruction of Jerusalem and 
the Temple, which occurred in the year 70 
A. D. ; that generation to which Jesus spoke 
was to see this. 

Human opinions about the second com- 
ing are that it is to be a visible, material, 
physical, spectacular coming, yet to be, but 
impending; or that Jesus and his disciples 
were wholly mistaken and that there never 
was and never will be any such coming as 
they expected; or that Jesus meant a spir- 
itual, personal coming or Presence, which 
began then, is always going on, and will go 
on to the end, when he shall deliver up the 
kingdom to the Father, and God shall be all 
in all. 

Whichever of these views you take, you 
can find some Bible texts to support you, and 
some good people who agree with you. 

The only view of the second coming of 
Jesus that history shows has begun to hap- 
pen, and that is forever happening and will 
continue to happen until it accomplishes its 
purpose, is the last view named above. 



115 



WHICH WAY 

This view is that the second coming of 
Jesus is his spiritual Presence, the Personal 
Christ, with us always, even to the end. This 
is the view that Universalists have always 
held, and do hold yet. 

It is an interesting study, to try to deter- 
mine whether we to-day can count on this 
idea of the second coming of Christ as spir- 
itual, with the entire confidence that our 
fathers taught, as Bible teaching. 

Ballou and Balfour and Channing agreed 
with the Orthodoxy of their day that there 
could be no mistakes in the Bible. All the 
language of Daniel and Revelation, and the 
apocalyptic chapters of the Gospels, which 
sometimes sounds to us so material, was 
never mistaken, but is always to be inter- 
preted as spiritual metaphor. To affirm, for 
instance, that Paul was mistaken in 1 Thess. 
4:16, when he declaredthat,beforehedied, 
the Lord Himself was to come down out of 
the heavens, with a shout and with a loud 
trumpet, was blasphemy. Mistakes do not 
occur in the Bible. Paul was not mistaken ; 
he meant a spiritual Presence and Voice, 
and so did all New Testament writers. 
They made no mistakes. 

Professor Burton expresses the best 



116 



THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS 

modern opinion which sets aside the view 
of our fathers, as follows : 

"The facts of history have shown that Paul was 
in error in his teachings in 1 Thessalonians, about 
the Lord coming in the clouds of heaven. It is a 
palpable infidelity to truth to affirm that this teach- 
ing is true ; it is a double error to transfer it to the 
present time and to reaffirm it for our own day." 

Modern scholarship, therefore, seems to 
affirm that the writers of our New Testa- 
ment expected an immediate second coming 
of Jesus, as visible and material, and that 
they were in error in this expectation. It 
never happened that way, and it never will. 

Much more important, however, than 
what the writers of our New Testament, the 
reporters of Jesus, thought, is the question of 
what Jesus himself thought. 

That Jesus was over the heads of his age, 
and that his reporters, who wrote our New 
Testament, were sometimes in error about 
him, we may believe, although our fathers 
strenuously denied it, but that Jesus himself 
was mistaken about his kingdom, and about 
the method and manner of his coming, is a 
disturbing thought to most Universalists. 

It is the opinion of considerable modern 
Liberal Orthodox theology, however, that 
Jesus was as much mistaken himself about 



117 



WHICH WAY 

his second coming and the manner and 
method of setting up his kingdom, as the 
writers of the New Testament were. 

If this be proved truth Universalists 
must accept it, as nothing has authority over 
us but truth, but it will require a rewriting 
of theology from the ground up. Of course, 
if Jesus was mistaken upon this very central 
fact of his mission, he ceases to be the sec- 
ond person of the Trinity, the very God. 
This will not be disturbing to most Univer- 
salists, who are commonly Unitarians on 
this point. But it will disturb some Univer- 
salists, who confidently affirm that "Jesus 
Christ is God with us." In spite of protests 
to the contrary, made by the Orthodox Lib- 
eral scholars who support the view, the proof 
that Jesus was mistaken about his coming 
and his kingdom, will mean the re-writing 
of our hymn books and liturgies. 

A gentle and good teacher, but one who 
was mistaken about his main point, is a far 
cry from the Eternal Christ. 

Devout Universalists will feel, as Dr. 
Gordon expressed himself in a recent utter- 
ance, to the effect that for a long time Ortho- 
dox theology buried Jesus and that now 
Higher Criticism is trying to do the same 
thing. 



118 



THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS 

As a fact, however, who knows enough 
about the actual words of Jesus to affirm that 
he was mistaken about his kingdom and 
about his coming? 

Jesus never wrote a word, and never 
asked any one else to do so. All we know 
is what his reporters have handed to us, in 
reports written from fifty to a hundred 
years after his birth. We know that the 
age and the reporters were possessed with a 
belief in a crude, material, visible Messianic 
kingdom. Was Jesus over the heads of these 
reporters, or was he one with them in their 
crude expectations of the Messiah and his 
kingdom? The feeling of a thoughtful 
reader must be that, while no man can be 
sure that he has one word that Jesus actually 
spoke, nevertheless he has in the New Tes- 
tament a clear picture of a Person that has 
moved the ages. 

Careful scholars have found the layers, 
in these reports of Jesus, from his earliest 
teachings, rising to the latest parts of the 
New Testament. Could a mistaken gentle- 
man have inspired this New Testament 
record, and grip the spirits of millions, as 
Jesus has? 

John said the Messiah was coming with 
sifting fan and burning fire, and when Jesus 



119 



WHICH WAY 

did not resort to these John sent and asked 
him if he really was the Christ. Who was 
mistaken, John or Jesus? A bit later the 
reporters say that Jesus said that no braver 
man than John had been born, but yet a child 
in his kingdom understood it better than 
John did. 

The reporters say that Jesus fled into the 
wilderness forty days, to struggle with the 
Messianic idea. He decided, in those days, 
not to be a profiteering Christ, changing 
stones to bread, nor a spectacular Messiah, 
leaping off the temple, nor a military Christ, 
conquering all the world and its kingdoms 
by arms. He must then have decided to be 
the Spiritual Messiah. When did he drop 
'lis high decision and revert to the common 
Messianic crudities? 

The reporters tell us that Jesus told them 
that his kingdom was like a seed, like yeast 
at work, like the growing corn, like the tree, 
and that those who loved, and those who 
served, were first in this kingdom. These 
are surely not the words of a mistaken 
teacher. When, then, did Jesus begin to 
make his mistakes? 

Well, the answer is offered to us that he 
began to make his mistakes when he spoke 
the "Little Apocalypse" found in Mark thir- 



120 



THE SECOND COMING OP JESUS 

teenth, and in Matthew twenty-fourth and 
fifth, and in a few passages in Luke, but 
hardly at all in John. Shall the weird ma- 
terial utterances of these apocalypses out- 
weigh all the sober, solemn words about his 
kingdom and his Presence with us always, 
found elsewhere in the records of his re- 
porters? 

Some of the language of his reporters in 
the New Testament is plainly based on their 
total misunderstanding of the intense meta- 
phors which Jesus may likely have used in 
the very language of the prophets of his 
race. It was the perpetual plaint of the 
Master that even those who had been so 
long with him did not understand him. On 
those Scribes and Pharisees who by religious 
inheritance should have been the first to 
understand and receive him, he pronounced 
the most terrific woes that ever fell from lips 
of flesh, because they would not enter his 
kingdom themselves nor allow others to en- 
ter. It could not have been a crude mate- 
rialistic kingdom of force and militarism 
he invited them to enter — into such a king- 
dom they might indeed have been persuaded 
— but the Spiritual Kingdom, led by the true 
Christ or God, that they could not even see, 
much less enter. Jesus mistaken ! Why, his 



121 



WHICH WAY 

fine spiritual teachings, even as his reporters 
caught them, have hardly yet been seriously 
tried out. The test of the truth that Jesus 
incarnated and expressed God is not specu- 
lation as to whether he actually spoke this 
word or that word as reported. The test is 
rather to try to be such a Person as he was 
and is, and see if it works. Let the Chris- 
tain world bring the Presence, the Person of 
Christ into its affairs, and if after fair trial 
he fails to function, then indeed he was mis- 
taken. He will not fail. We are mistaken; 
Jesus the Christ was not mistaken. He is 
always coming in his glory, and shall so come 
until he delivers up the kingdom to the 
Father, and God is all in all. 

Our fathers did not speak finalities. 
Modern Christian scholarship can set them 
right on many points. But their conviction 
that Jesus Christ was not mistaken about his 
mission, and his kingdom, and his Person — 
a Presence with us forever — Universalists 
still maintain. 



122 



XIV. THE WAY OF THE AGES 

Any Universalist may write the closing 
chapter of this book. In sober truth each 
Universalist is writing it, perhaps not in let- 
ters, but in the exhibition he makes of him- 
self to those who are of the Way. One of the 
beautiful prayers of the Bible is, "Search 
me, God, and know my heart, try me and 
know my thoughts, and see if there be any 
wicked way in me, and lead me in the way 
everlasting." 

This Way everlasting is the Way of the 
Ages when properly translated. It appears 
that there are always two ways open to our 
feet. One is the way of the wicked, the other 
is the Way of the Ages. 

The Psalmist declares that the way of the 
wicked shall perish. That is a fine discrimi- 
nation, which all good Universalists think 
the Psalmist made intelligently and thought- 
fully. He did not say that the wicked should 
perish, but that their way should. Let us 
hope that he is right, and that the "Great 
Physician' ' does not kill his patients in his 
efforts to cure them. The Way of the Ages 
means a way that lasts forever, but the 
glorious thing about it is not the time that it 
lasts. The glorious thing about it is a certain 



123 



WHICH WAY 

quality it possesses, that is it grows better all 
the way. Most things we hold grow worse. 
The tooth of time gnaws them. But this 
Way of the Ages is always a better way than 
it ever was before. The path of the just is 
like a shining light that shines more and 
more. 

One of the names given the early Church 
was The Way, Paul declaring that in his day 
there was no small stir concerning the Way. 
That was encouraging. The only hopeless 
time and place is that in which there is no 
stir about the Way, and no interest in it. 
Jesus never said anything better to us than, 
"I am the Way." The Universalist Church 
to-day, like all churches, has a great passion 
for applied Christianity. That is the Way 
of the Ages. "Do these sayings of mine," 
said Jesus. 

This book has dealt largely with theology, 
and Universalists are at times impatient with 
theology. That is good. It would be worth 
while to write a book that would give Uni- 
versalists enough theology to last them some 
little time, so that they could turn their at- 
tention to action, doing things. 

Theology is an attempt to make a map 
of a country, but a map is of no use to folks 
who are not going anywhere. To love ap- 



124 



THE WAY OF THE AGES 

plied Christianity is indeed a fine thing, but 
a true theology is needed to help by intelli- 
gently defining to us what Christianity really 
is. Men can hardly love God, if God is really 
like that old Andover Creed description. It 
is not really much use to try to serve man if 
man is like that description given in Chan- 
ning's description of Calvinism quoted 
earlier. Theology should not make the uni- 
verse an insane asylum, and God hateful, and 
then tell us that we ought not to be inter- 
ested further in theology. 

The fact is that we cannot drop the sub- 
ject at that point. We move amendments. 
Somehow even when the best amendments 
are adopted, still we must talk theology, for 
every minute there is a baby born, and some- 
body ought to tell it true ideas of God, and 
of itself, and of its fellow babies. 

The passion for applied Christianity, ab- 
solutely indispensable as it is, is, however, 
more a recognition of endless problems than 
it is a solution of any problem. The ques- 
tion presents countless phases, and men 
sharply differ as to Christianity and its ap- 
plication. 

There is a conspicuous group urging us 
all to quit what they call our little futile 
spasms for reforms, and to^prepare for a 



125 



WHICH WAY 

second coming of Jesus materially and vis- 
ibly in the clouds, to destroy this lost and 
wicked world and burn it up. It is long since 
hopelessly beyond mending, these tell us, the 
only remedy is a universal bonfire, to get rid 
of the rubbish. To this group this idea is 
applied Christianity, and one of them has 
just given the Baptist Home Mission Society 
$1,500,000 to invest forever, the income to 
be used to hire preachers to affirm and apply 
that gospel. Evidently some war lord, or 
profiteer, is willing to invest that large sum 
to induce preachers to fix their attention on 
this program of a second coming of Christ, 
thinking that it will leave him to continue 
his nefarious piracies unwatched and un- 
rebuked. 

To another group applied Christianity is 
of the mystic and quietist type, worship, de- 
votion, meditation, and soul union with the 
ineffable. Some want the healing cults or 
applied psychology. Some want political 
action, often of the most radical type. 

Some Christian people are sure that ap- 
plied Christianity is to keep a big army and 
navy ; others see only satanism in this. Some 
like prohibition and some refuse it. So the 
countless aspects and phases of the problem 
occur and recur. Christians may never 



126 



THE WAY OF THE AGES 

agree on what applied Christianity really is. 
Perhaps it is well that they do not agree, 
since there must be endless fields that need 
workers, and each type of mind should have 
the field that its faculties fit it to cultivate. 

Maybe the great thing, after all, is that 
every Christian be in the Way of human ser- 
vice, according to his own best vision. 

A great need of to-day is some reorgan- 
izing of the Christian forces of the world. 
In many communities the spectacle of many 
weak but warring sects, each supporting its 
own against all the others, is a crime. An 
increasing number of communities are seeing 
this, and some very hopeful movements exist 
looking to the cure of these painful distract- 
ing divisions. All good Universalists are 
interested in the advance of the community 
feeling, and of fraternal interests. 

But, after all, denominations correspond 
to companies in an army. It is not likely 
that the efficiency of any army would be in- 
creased by abolishing the regiments that 
compose it. Rightly functioning, the divi- 
sions greatly add to efficiency. The evil 
arises when they shoot into each other, in- 
stead of at a common enemy. 

Denominations, in growing communities, 
are not an evil, unless mistaken men make 



127 



WHICH WAY 

them so. They allow for certain very whole- 
some expressions of varying points of view. 
Modern attempts at creedless creeds, or 
vague and indefinite groupings, in an effort 
to make a world faith to abolish all faiths, 
are not ideal ways to reorganize human so- 
ciety. Chesterton thought that he had ob- 
served "that- evQry sectarian was more sec- 
tarian in his unsectarianism than he was in 
his sect." So far most efforts to abolish 
sects have simply resulted in one more sect, 
more sectarian than any was that it tried to 
displace. 

There is gain in cultivating likeness, but 
unlikeness is far more interesting. God 
made all men of one blood, but yet found a 
way to prevent any two of them from being 
alike. The unity of mankind should be 
looked for in "Which Way," and not in mo- 
notonous uniformity. 

There is a fellowship of the spirit, 
fathoms deeper than differences of opinion. 
It is the fellowship of those who love the 
Way of the Ages. 



128 



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